


everybody's got a hungry heart

by evewithanapple



Series: the girls of summer [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24262381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: Twenty-five years after leaving Derry, Emily Kaspbrak comes home. In more ways than one.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: the girls of summer [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583401
Comments: 15
Kudos: 87





	everybody's got a hungry heart

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for *deep breath* basically everything we see in the movies (child abuse, violence, homphobia) plus financial and psychiatric marital abuse, mentions of lesbophobia and (past) threats of corrective rape, and Rachel using the d-slur to describe herself.

She gets the call when she’s at work. “At work” in this case meaning “sitting at her desk in Reception,” but she’s not actually doing anything that could actually be construed as work. She already went over the rest of the month’s schedule, called every patient who needs a reminder that they have an upcoming appointment, answered every outstanding e-mail, and re-organized the file cabinet. Now she has nothing left to do but scroll through twitter and get into arguments with people in the New York Times comments section. The sound of the phone ringing is honestly kind of a relief.

“Dr. Willard’s office,” she says crisply, in a tone of voice she’s honed carefully over the past decade. “This is Emily speaking, how can I help you?”

There’s a crackly moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Emily waits. Some of their patients are old, and it takes them awhile to realize that they’re actually connected to the office. But the voice that speaks after that first instant doesn’t sound old at all - fourty, at the most. “Emily? Is this Emily Kaspbrak?”

Emily’s grip tightens on the phone. “Who is this?” She doesn’t go by Emily Kaspbrak anymore; she hasn’t in years. Who would even think to ask that? Is this a stalker? Is she being stalked? Should she hit the panic button?

“Emily,” The man (it’s a man, she’s pretty sure) on the other end lets out what sounds like a sigh of relief. “It’s Mike. Mike Hanlon, from Derry. Do you remember me?”

She’s about to say “no,” and also “please stop tying up the line, we need to be available for our patients,” when she feels a slow burning sensation begin to churn in her gut. _Derry_. She hasn’t thought about Derry since - since 1992 at the latest, after she and her mother moved away. Derry was filed away in the archives of her brain, tucked in a back corner beside other childhood memories that she doesn’t have any real use for now that she’s left all that behind. Derry has so little importance in her day-to-day life, she hadn’t even realized she’d forgotten it. _Had_ she forgotten? Or had she just not thought about it?

“Mike,” she says. She doesn’t realize she’s white-knuckling the phone until her fingers start to ache. “Mike - Hanlon.” A few other memories are starting to swim to the surface: a farm. Mike had lived on a farm. It had been muddy, and it had smelled like animals - sheep, it had smelled like sheep. He’d raised sheep. And she’d visited once, but she hadn’t worn proper boots, and the mud had sucked at her shoes, and she’d been in terrible trouble when she got home, and her loafers were wrecked -

“Yeah,” God, he really does sound relieved. “It’s been awhile, huh?”

She starts to say, “not that long,” then stops. It hasn’t been that long, has it? It doesn’t feel that long. But she left in ’92, and it’s 2016 now, which makes it - “Twenty-four years,” she says. “God. _God_.”

“Yeah,” he says again. He clears his throat, and there’s a sound on the other end of the line like someone shuffling papers. “Look, Emily - I’m really glad I caught you. I’ve missed you guys, you know? But the reason I called - “

She loses the tail end of his sentence, still caught on the middle: _you guys_. Of course; there’d been seven of them, hadn’t there? Emily, Mike, and - Stan, there’d been Stan. God, he’d been almost as fussy as she had. And then Bev, who never fussed about anything, and Bill - _follow the leader_ , they all followed Bill - and Ben, who’d always been so sweet. And -

\- _Rachel_ -

She realizes belatedly that Mike’s fallen silent on the other end of the line, presumably waiting for an answer. “Sorry,” she says, “sorry, I, ah. Didn’t catch that.”

“I said, you guys need to come back.” He doesn’t sound relieved now; he sounds pained. “I’ve been calling everybody, and it’ll be easier to explain in person, but - I need you all here. We made an oath, remember?”

No, she doesn’t remember. Maybe she did make an oath, in that way that children tend to - over-estimating their own importance and how much of childhood they’ll cling to years later. She probably made all kinds of oaths, then promptly forgot them. Even if she did swear something to the effect of “we’ll all come back if you call us,” he can’t expect her to actually honour it now, when they’re all older and wiser -

“You might,” he says carefully, “still have the scar.”

She looks down. Her right hand is resting on her desk, palm-down. When she lifts and examines it, she sees it: a white half-moon line running across the heel of her hand. She’s glanced at that scar dozens of times, and never thought twice about where it came from. It’s so pale, it almost blends into the other lines crisscrossing her palm. Like she’d been born with it. But she hadn’t, had she?

“Yeah,” she whispers, “yeah, I do.” She folds her fingers over, closing her hand into a fist. “When do you want us there?”

* * *

Of course, it’s not as easy as that. She has to buy a plane ticket (not too difficult; New York to Maine isn’t that expensive, and she’s got savings) and put in for time off at work, which means talking to her husband, which means explaining where she’s going and why. That part’s less easy.

“An old friend called,” she says, fidgeting. They’d driven home together, like they always do, and then she’d run into the bedroom and started flinging clothes and toiletries and medication into her suitcase willy-nilly. Max had followed her in, blinking at the whirlwind, repeating “honey? What’s going on?” until she’d stopped and sat down on the bed long enough to explain. “He’s - there’s an event going on, in Maine. He called all of us, we went to school together. He needs us there.” _An event_ , she realizes belatedly, is not the best cover story in the world; it could mean anything from a sudden death to a high school reunion, and who suddenly skips town to attend a high school reunion? But she can’t explain the actual reason, mainly because she doesn’t _know_ the actual reason. Mike hadn’t explained what they’d be doing once they got to Derry; he’d just said a bunch of vague stuff about an oath and “what happened when we were kids,” and Emily had immediately agreed and come home to start packing. It was hard to talk about logically, because there was no logic involved.

“What old friend?” Max is still wearing his lab coat from work. He doesn’t really need to wear it at work - he sees people for checkups, he’s not actually performing any medical procedures - but he always wears it anyway. He says it makes patients trust him more. Sometimes - most of the time - it makes _Emily_ trust him more, knowing that he’s an expert, that he can look her up and down and tell what’s wrong with her in seconds. Just now, it’s making it harder to have this conversation. He’s looking at her like she’s a crazy person. She’s _behaving_ like a crazy person. She can’t really blame him.

“An old one,” she repeats. “You never met him. I hadn’t talked to him in years, since I moved, but - he’s from Derry. You remember Derry, right? I told you I grew up there.” _Had_ she told him? Like so many Derry-related things, it’s a hole in her memory. She’s pretty sure she mentioned growing up in Maine, and she’d gone to Bangor, once, when her father’s mother had died. But that was before she met Max.

“So, you’re going to Maine - Derry,” he says slowly. “Because someone you haven’t talked to in years called today and asked you to. For an event.”

She clenches her hands together in her lap. “It sounded urgent.”

“Right.” His gaze bores into her. “Emily, I don’t think going to Maine would be a good thing for you, right now. You seem very excited - “

“I’m just in a hurry,”

“- a bit manic, maybe,” he continues, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I think it would be better if you stayed here, so I could keep an eye on you. Maybe take a few days off work, to calm down. Have you filled your lithium prescription lately? I know it’s been awhile, but - “

“I don’t need lithium,” she snaps, then bites her tongue. She’d taken it for a year or so after her mother died, when everything had been too overwhelming to manage, and she’d blanked out instead of coping. Max had helped her get the prescription; it had been right after they started dating. But she hasn’t been depressed in years, and even if she were, depression would not be driving her to go back to Derry. If anything, depression would make her want to stay _away_ from Derry. “I just - I need to do this, Max.”

He just keeps looking at her. Sitting under his stare is making her itchy, but there’s nowhere for her to go unless she pushes past him and runs out of the room. It doesn’t seem like a bad option, really. It would at least get her out of this conversation.

“Besides,” he says, “I’m not comfortable paying for plane tickets, under the circumstances.” He says it with an air of finality, like a door has just been closed on the whole issue. He’s not paying for tickets, which means she’s not going. Signed, sealed, delivered, nothing more to worry about.

“You don’t need to pay for them,” she says. “I can pay my own way. I have savings.” The two of them have a joint bank account, which is where the majority of their money goes; as a doctor, his salary is significantly higher than what she makes (what he pays her) as a receptionist. But she’s had a little cash box tucked away for years now, tiny pieces of each paycheck deposited every month until the contents swelled to the thousands. She never uses the money, never even touches the box except to add another deposit. But she likes knowing it’s there.

“You - “ He stops. Rubs his eyes. “You have what?”

“Savings,” she repeats, wondering why the admission makes her chest tight. “Just - money for a rainy day. I guess now’s a rainy day.”

“Savings,” he says. He sounds - dazed. Like she knocked him over the head. “You never mentioned.”

She flips the lid shut on her suitcase and stands up. “It’s enough for the plane ticket,” she says, “and for a hotel. You won’t have to worry about the expense. And I’ll call you when I get there, so you know how long I’ll be staying. It’ll probably - it might end up just being a few days. No big deal, right? I can get Angela to cover for me at work. I know she’s been looking to pick up some extra hours.”

“But I didn’t - “

“I won’t be gone more than a week.” She zips the suitcase up. Did she pack a toothbrush? She can buy one in Maine, if she hasn’t.

“You shouldn’t - “

“I’ll keep in touch.”

“I don’t want you to - “

“I’d better go,” she says, “if I want to catch the red eye.” Not meeting his gaze, she hurries past him, suitcase rolling and bumping in her wake, leaving Max still sputtering in the doorway of their bedroom. She doesn’t look back.

* * *

The quickest flight goes from New York to Portland, but landing in Bangor will get her closer to Derry. It’s almost midnight when they touch down, too late to safely drive anywhere. She stays overnight in a motel by the airport, lying on top of the bedding (she does _not_ trust the housekeeping staff here; the carpet bears several suspicious stains, and there’s a ring of rust around the bathtub drain) and blinking in the darkness until sunrise. Her skin feels tight all over, like a sausage about to burst after too long spent in the frying pan. Her phone is blinking green with several missed calls from her husband; she ignores them. She’ll call once she gets to Derry, she’s decided. It’s still sticking to the basic premise of their agreement.

(Their one-sided agreement, which he didn’t actually agree to. She’s not going to think about that just yet.)

When Mike called, she hadn’t wanted to come back. She hasn’t revisited Maine in almost twenty-five years. Now she’s back - or near enough - and she both does and doesn’t want to be here. There’s a long shadow falling over her memories, blotting out things she _knows_ are important, if she could just reach them. But there’s also a sense of inevitability pushing her forward - not even like she _has_ to do this, more like she’s somehow _destined_ to do this, even though the concept of destiny is one that she’s always been vaguely ashamed of believing in. It makes more sense for her to be coming back because she’s doing a favour for an old friend than because grand cosmic forces have arranged it this way.

It’s just a good thing she didn’t say any of this to Max. If she had, she wouldn’t have made it out the front door; he would have called the hospital and had her sectioned within the hour. She’d thought, for a second, when he brought up the lithium, that he might go ahead and have her sectioned regardless. That’s another thing she doesn’t really want to think about.

It’s around seven in the morning when she gives up on sleep and gets out of bed. She helps herself to the breakfast buffet (stale pastries and sad, withered fruit,) rents a car, and downs an energy drink before she hits the road. It’s a five-hour drive to Derry with no traffic, and she’s not sure what the roads will be like. Mike had said that the whole group was meeting at some Chinese restaurant that, to the best of her (limited) knowledge, hadn’t been there when she was a kid. It might take some extra time to find it.

She ends up cruising into town at two in the afternoon, after some hardcore defensive driving on the way (does everyone in Maine drive like an absolute lunatic? Is this something she hadn’t noticed at the time because she hadn’t gotten her learner’s permit yet?) and drifts around the edges of town, killing time while she waits. The meeting time is set for six. That gives her four hours to while away, in a town that had very little in the way of entertainment to offer back in the eighties, and probably hasn’t improved much since then. No multiplex; no shopping mall. One tiny library, mostly stocked with local genealogy records, and no bookstore.

(Something tickles at her brain then, something about bookstores - and books. She’d had to go out of town to buy new books, she remembers, her and - who? There’d been someone else. But she still can’t remember.)

In the end, she winds up driving around and stopping in front of her old house. She’s not even sure how she knows it’s her old house, because she definitely doesn’t remember the address. She just glides to a stop in front of it, feeling another missing piece click into place in her brain. There was the mulberry tree in the front yard, which she’d never been allowed to eat from (worms, her mother had said; she’d be poisoned) and the shutters on the upstairs windows, though they’ve been repainted from green to white. A “for sale” sign is planted in the lawn, jutting out from under the mulberry tree. If she goes around back, she knows, there’ll be another tree - an elm, broad and old, branches extended enough that she could reach the bedroom window if she climbed it. She hadn’t climbed it herself, but there had been someone -

She doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even know how she remembers all of this; it rolls over her in waves, so overwhelming that she slumps down in her seat, eyes hot and streaming. She can hear her mother’s screech from the front stoop, _Emily, don’t you dare touch that fruit! You’ll make yourself sick! Emily, don’t dig in the garden, you could get fungus from the dirt! Emily - !_

She presses her forehead against the steering wheel, gulping for air. “Mommy,” she whimpers, and she’s not sure if she’s pleading for comfort or defending herself from an onslaught of screaming. Her mother died almost ten years ago. Cancer. She’d been so afraid at the end, worried for Emily’s future - _you always worry me so much Emmy, you can’t take proper care of yourself, who’s going to keep you safe now?_ \- only appeased when Max came in to check on her. Max had been good with her. That was the first thing Emily had noticed about him - alone among all the doctors at the hospital, he had been able to calm her mother down. Emily hadn’t intended on telling her they were dating, but Max had let it slip, and she’d been so relieved. She remembered her mother clutching Max’s hand, cancer-ravaged body shaking with sobs as she begged him. _You’ll look after her, won’t you? You’ll keep my little girl safe?_

“You were lucky to have her,” Max had told her after the funeral. “Not many parents are that devoted.” And she had slipped easily from her mother’s hands into Max’s, the chain of custody unbroken. She had never had to feel unsafe.

A woman steps out onto the front stoop, and Emily stares for a moment before she shakes herself out of her memories. That woman isn’t her mother. She’s tall and young, with a baby resting on one hip. She shades her eyes, looking out into the street, and Emily slams her foot down on the gas and peels out of the subdivision at a speed that is almost definitely illegal. The last thing she wants is to prolong her stay in Derry by getting arrested for peeking into strangers’ windows.

(Her phone is still blinking green with unheard messages. She does not pick it up. She’ll call after they meet at the restaurant, she thinks; then she’ll have a better idea of how long she’ll be staying.)

The restaurant, Jade of the Orient, is new to her - when she’d lived in Derry, the land it sat on had been the site of a K-mart. Derry was not a town that adapted quickly to change, and there had been no market for Chinese food in 1989. Emily’s pretty sure Derry hadn’t had any proper sit-down restaurants back then, just a diner, a pizzeria, and the McDonald’s right on the edge of town. She’d never been allowed to eat at any of those places anyway (her mother had scared her straight with tales of diners finding mealworms in their French fries) and so her childhood diet had been restricted to the casseroles and pot pies they ate at home. She hadn’t tasted her first sweet and sour chicken until she went away to college, and had eaten nothing else for two weeks straight, until she wound up giving herself an upset stomach. After that, she’d stuck to pot pies.

But she’s here now, and she’s not going to insist that they move their meeting somewhere else - that would just prolong the whole ordeal. She’ll find something on the menu that won’t send her digestive system into reverse; she just needs to make sure the waitstaff know not to slip her anything with dairy. Or peanuts. Or shellfish. She has a whole list on her phone, it’ll be fine.

“. . . peanut oil is especially bad for me, and I know it’s in a lot of dishes, so please let me know,” she says to the waitress as she walks in, “And no shellfish or wheat, and if I eat a cashew, I could realistically . . . die . . .”

She trails off. Standing in the dining room are two men, one of whom she’s fairly certain is Mike (not only was he the only black kid in their group, she’s pretty sure he was the only black kid in Derry, period) and the other - something about his eyes rings a bell, but it’s nothing she can put a name to. It’s not Ben, he was always on the heavier side, and Stan had curly hair. So this has to be -

“Emily!” Bill - because it _is_ Bill, she recognizes him now - crosses the room and grabs her in a bear hug. “God, it’s been way too long. How are you?” He holds her at arm’s length, beaming. It’s his eyes that give him away - pale blue, and weirdly magnetic. They’d all fallen into line under his gaze, no matter what insanity he was proposing, and he’d always seemed ten feet tall to Emily as she cowered in her sneakers. He doesn’t seem ten feet tall now though. Has he not grown at _all_ since they were kids? His forehead only reaches her nose.

“Good, I’m good,” she says, shaken. Like before, at the house, the sudden gush of newfound memories is knocking her off-balance. She looks past Bill to Mike, who’s standing by the table, hands resting on the back of a chair. “And Mike, it’s - it’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too, Emily,” he says. His eyes are warm, but his mouth is turned down at the corners. He looks so tired, she thinks. Her grandmother had had a painting of King Solomon hanging over her bed, and the man in the painting had had that same expression - sheer exhaustion, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. Life hasn’t been all sunshine and roses for her since she left Derry, but she has the impression that it’s been much, much worse for Mike.

“It’s good to see both of you,” Bill says firmly, his hands still resting on Emily’s shoulders. Then he looks past her, and his eyes widen. “ _All_ of you,” he clarifies, then sidesteps around Emily. She twists her head to see where he’s going, and there’s three people in the doorway - the redheaded woman has to be Bev, she couldn’t mistake that hair. The guy - he doesn’t look anything like the Ben she remembers, but he doesn’t look anything like Stan either, so that one’s still up in the air. And behind him, still half-hidden in the shadows, is -

If she thought the memories were overwhelming before, this one slams into her like a freight train. It’s not even a singular memory, more like a cacophony of _sleepovers voices book swap glasses_ _bad jokes quarry swims clubhouse,_ too loud and garbled for her to pick out any one image. There’s no air in her lungs, and she gropes blindly for her inhaler, but it’s lost somewhere in the bottom of her purse.

 _How did Mike not warn me_ she thinks, and then _how could I have forgotten?_

Then Rachel shouts, “Emmylou!” a big, shit-eating grin breaking out on her face, and Emily thinks, _oh right, she was_ always _like this._

Someone - Emily doesn’t know who, but they _will_ face her wrath when she finds out - hands Rachel a gong, which she uses to ceremonially open the latest meeting of the Losers Club before Emily snatches it out of her grasp. “That belongs to the restaurant,” she snaps, “you’re not supposed to actually use it.”

“That’s the Ems we all know and love.” Rachel keeps on grinning, tipping back in her chair. “Hey, I don’t see a sign telling me not to use it. Is there a sign anywhere, Bev? Did I miss it?”

Bev just rolls her eyes. “I guess some things never change.”

“Damn straight!” Rachel exclaims. Emily buries her face in her hands, partially because she’s still overwhelmed by it all, and partially to obscure the fact that she’s smiling.

The guy who came in with Bev - he _is_ Ben, it turns out, and Emily’s still dealing with the ensuing mindfuck that is a 6’1, six-packed (she can’t actually see, but she’s pretty sure) Ben Hanscom - picks up the small talk baton and runs with it, peppering everyone around the table with questions about their jobs, their homes, and their general goings-on since they all saw each other last. It gives Emily the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, sinking down in her chair and stuffing several crackers in her mouth in the hopes of bringing her blood sugar up.

Besides feeling overwhelmed and generally wobbly (the crackers don’t help much) Emily really just doesn’t have anything to say. She hadn’t expected that any of them would - sure, they can catch up on their college degrees and spouses (although that’s a subject she doesn’t really want to touch) but how interesting can their jobs be, really? They’re all adults, with adult careers. Kindergarten dreams of being astronauts and firefighters are all in the rear-view mirror by now. They’ve probably all settled into office busywork, right?

Well. As it turns out, no. Bev is a fashion designer (which doesn’t entirely come as a surprise; one of the first memories that surfaced when she first remembered Bev was sitting next to her in ninth grade Home Ec, knocking elbows while they both tried to operate the sewing machine) and apparently so successful that she has her name on her own designer label. She looks it, too: Emily doesn’t exactly follow high fashion, but she can tell that Bev’s outfit wouldn’t be out of place in an upscale bar or club. Emily herself is wearing a skirt down to her calves, a button-down blouse, and a shapeless cardigan. She shrinks down in her seat, hoping that the restaurant’s half-light disguises her outfit.

Ben builds houses. Bill is an author. Emily’s pretty sure she’s seen his books in Borders, actually, and picked a few up and leafed through them before guiltily returning them to the display and backing away. Max thinks that reading horror novels is bad for her mental health, so she hasn’t picked one up in years. Mike is a librarian, which is a slight relief - working in a library is respectable, but at least they’re not all millionaire high-fliers. And Rachel -

“I saw your show!” Bill exclaims, jabbing his chopsticks in her direction. “There’s always reruns on TBS, I swear they marathon it twice a week. It’s the one about the White House, yeah? And you played the - “

“The press secretary,” Rachel finishes for him. “Yeah, I did.” She’s still got the same goofy smile on her face, but Emily thinks she can see tension stretching out the skin around their eyes. “Didn’t think the UK would really care about American sitcoms, though. You’ve got Monty Python over there, eh guvnor?” She slides into a truly terrible cockney accent on the last few words, the kind that would put Dick van Dyke to shame.

“Money Python’s Flying Circus went off the air in 1974, Rachel,” Bev says, “they hadn’t even made Holy Grail yet. You’re a comedian, you should know this.”

“I’m not a comedian!” Rachel looks indignant. “I was on a comedy show, that’s not the same thing.”

“I saw the show a couple of times,” Ben offers. “I thought you were pretty funny.”

“I don’t think they were aspiring to much more than ‘pretty funny’ on that show,” Emily says, and five heads swivel to look at her. Belatedly, she realizes it’s the first time she’s spoken since they all sat down.

“Way harsh, Ems,” Bev says. Bill mutters something that sounds like “she has a point,” then grunts; Emily’s pretty sure Bev kicked him under the table.

“So what are you doing, Emmylou?” Rachel asks, leaning across the table towards her. “Are you a nurse now? Do you do kissograms?”

“No,” Emily snaps, “and also, that’s sexist.”

“I have tits, I’m allowed to be sexist.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“Bev!” Rachel wheels around. “Back me up here.”

Bev is sitting back in her chair, shaking her head and smiling. “I know better than to get in between the two of you when you’re like this.”

Rachel groans. “I can’t believe you’d abandon me like this. Ben?”

“Uh-uh.” Ben does not physically back away from the table, but Emily can tell that he would if he could. Both of his hands are extended outward, palms flat. “I don’t want to get involved.”

“You can’t ask Ben what is and isn’t sexist anyway,” Emily says, “he’s a guy.”

“Of course he’s a guy,” Rachel says with a scoff, “do you think anyone could miss that? He looks like a Brazilian soccer player. He looks like the _entire Brazilian soccer team_.”

“Oh, God,” Ben says.

Bill picks up his beer glass again. “Come on, stop picking on Ben. Look at him, he’s turning red.”

“You don’t have to look at me, actually,” Ben says. “I’d be just as happy if you didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Emily says, “leave him alone.” Her stomach, which had been mostly settled up to this point, has started churning; she regrets the crackers now. Rachel thinks Ben’s hot? Obviously, he’s objectively attractive, but does she _personally_ think he’s hot? Did she think he was hot back when they were kids, too? Is he her _type_?

“Fine.” Rachel crosses her arms. “I’ll leave him alone. We’re off-topic, anyway. Emily, what are you doing these days?”

“ _Are_ you a nurse?” Bev asks. “I thought you might be. You were always so interested in medicine.”

Rachel snorts. “It’s called hypochondria.”

“Fuck off,” Emily snaps. “No, I’m not a nurse, I’m an office manager.” After a moment’s pause, she adds, “in a doctor’s office.”

“I knew it!” Rachel waves her chopsticks in the air. Mike ducks to avoid getting stabbed in the head. “I knew you couldn’t stay away from those sweet, sweet hand sanitizer fumes for long!”

“I feel very sorry for you if you don’t use hand sanitizer,” Emily says. “Do you know how many germs you come into contact with over the course of an eight-hour workday? Just handling cash is like sticking your hand in a petri dish.”

Rachel’s just jammed a mouthful of noodles in her mouth, but she talks around them. “Nobody uses cash anymore Emily, it’s all about the plastic.” She swallows. “I wash my hands when I use the bathroom like a normal person, I don’t need to constantly scrub a layer of skin off whenever I touch a foreign object.”

“Oh,” Emily says, “I’m so glad you’ve mastered the art of washing your hands after you use the bathroom. Your mother must be so proud.”

“Residuals from my show paid for her condo in Florida, so she and I are great.” Rachel kicks back in her chair, tipping it against the wall. Emily feels a deep-rooted urge to reach out and grab her before she goes ass over teakettle, and ignores it. “And if you actually talked to a doctor, you’d know that using too much sanitizer strips away all the bacteria that you actually need to keep your immune system running, so you’ve _more_ likely to get sick if you use it all the time.”

“I use it,” Emily snaps, “because my _husband_ , who is a _doctor_ , keeps it in the office, and he probably knows better than you whether it’s a good idea to use hand sanitizer or not!”

There’s a beat, then Rachel says, “Wait. Your what?”

Well, fuck.

“I didn’t know you got married!” Bev says, while Emily sits there and silently ponders the sand trap she just walked herself into. “You never said!”

“To be fair, neither did I,” Bill says. “I figured the ring did most of the talking for me.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Emily mutters into her glass of water. She can feel Rachel staring at her, and does not want to meet her gaze. She knows - she just _knows_ \- that she’ll have some smart remark or other, and it will make Emily think of the blinking green light on her phone, and she’ll snap back for real, and this whole evening will turn into an honest-to-God fight within minutes.

“I think Stan’s married, too,” Mike offers, “he mentioned his wife on the phone.”

Then Ben says, “wait, where _is_ Stan?” and the conversation goes skidding down a ravine shortly afterwards. Even with everything that comes of it, Emily can’t honestly say that she isn’t relieved.

* * *

The Derry Townhouse is cleaner than the motel she spent last night in, but there’s still a vaguely musty air around the whole building. Maybe it’s just the décor, which reminds Emily of nothing more than her grandmother’s house in Iowa - lots of dark wood paneling, red carpet running up and down the stairs, heavy curtains drawn across the windows. It’s like a cross between the worst parts of the seventies, and the half-digested remains of a Victorian manor. Emily absolutely loathes it.

After their conversation in the bar, she drags her suitcases back upstairs and sits on her bed, staring at the wall. There’s a huge painting of a horse in a meadow mounted on the wall across from her bed, and she guesses it’s supposed to look pastoral, but the colours - all dark greens and blues - just make it look ominous. It just makes her think of the painting in the synagogue Stan told them about, the one who had haunted him that summer.

God. Stan. When Bev had finally been able to get through to his wife on the phone, all she’d told them is that Stan is in the hospital and isn’t able to talk on the phone right now. Pumping her for details had, under the circumstances, seemed like the dick move to end all dick moves, but that hadn’t stopped them from speculating after Bev ended the call. And based on what Mike had told them at the restaurant, the most obvious answer was miles away from comforting.

“Fuck,” she says to the horse, then adds “fuck _you_ ,” because the creepy bastard won’t stop _staring_ at her. She’s going to have to turn it around in order to get a decent night’s sleep here. Of course, if It makes a habit of coming out of paintings in general, turning the thing around is not going to help her much.

She’d finally texted Max when she got back to her room the second time. Texted, not called - after all of the shit Mike unloaded on them, plus the news about Stan, she didn’t trust herself to actually talk to him. He would have heard the anxiety in her voice and insisted on driving out to get her tonight. Of course, he probably would have done that anyway - but that’s another conversation that can be put off for a little while longer. He knows she’s safe. He knows she’ll be staying for at least the rest of the week. (Maybe less than that, but she figures she’s at least given herself a buffer before going back to New York.) She’s held up her end of the deal, mostly.

There’s a knock at the door, and she nearly leaps out of her skin. Then she thinks, _get a grip already_ ; if It comes after her, how likely he to politely knock on the door before snapping her neck? It’s probably one of her friends, wanting to check in. She stands up and tiptoes to the door, which does not have a peephole. “Who is it?”

“Your friendly neighbourhood clown monster,” is the response from the other side. Emily sighs heavily before opening the door. “Rachel for Christ’s sake, do you have any sense of decorum at all?”

Rachel leans against the doorframe, grinning. “Decorum? I hardly know ‘em.”

“That doesn’t even make _sense_ \- “ Emily stops, pinching the bridge of her nose. She’s too tired to get into it with Rachel right now. “What do you want?”

“Wow, so friendly. You should quit office managing and go into the hospitality business.” It’s then that Emily notices Rachel is already in her pajamas - or at least, she assumes they’re her pajamas, given that they’re a pair of sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt that reads “THIS IS MY PURIM COSTUME” across the front - and holding her toothbrush in her left hand. “I was wondering if you had any toothpaste I could use? I forgot to pack some, and I’m pretty sure the grocery stores close at seven around here.”

“I’m just grateful you actually brush your teeth on a regular basis,” Emily says, stepping back and letting Rachel into the room. She’s barefoot, and Emily cringes internally thinking of the potential for picking up foot fungus from the hotel carpet before deciding it’s not her problem. Rachel’s toenails are painted, she notices - or at least, they were at one point. The paint has flaked off in large chunks, but there’s enough left for Emily to tell that they were originally bright green. She curls her own, unpainted toes inside her socks. Did Rachel get a pedicure done? She didn’t strike Emily as the type when they were kids, and she doesn’t strike her as the type now. But people could always surprise you.

“Make sure you don’t let the tube touch your toothbrush,” she calls after Rachel as Rachel goes into the bathroom. “I don’t want your mouth germs transferring onto my brush.”

There’s the sound of water running, and Rachel spits loudly before calling back “You won’t get my mouth germs, the toothpaste will kill them!”

“Toothpaste doesn’t kill germs, it cleans plaque off your teeth!” Emily can see in the bathroom mirror that Rachel’s laughing at her through a mouthful of foam. It makes a warm sensation rise up under her ribs, one she can’t entirely identify. Heartburn, probably. “Your dad’s a dentist, how can you possibly not know this?”

“Correction - “ Rachel spits again, then shuts the tap off before coming back into the bedroom, “my dad was a dentist. He has been happily retired since 2005, and has spent the past ten years golfing and wearing Hawaiian shirts. He and my mom went to a Jimmy Buffett concert last year, they sent me pictures. Retirement is treating them well.”

“Good for them,” Emily says. Her voice is grumpier than it really needs to be. “Are you done?”

“It’s almost like you’re trying to get rid of me,” Rachel says, “and I resent that. But yes.” Still, she hesitates with her hand on the doorknob. “Your phone’s ringing.”

“What?” Emily turns around; her phone, sitting on the bedside table, has lit up with an INCOMING CALL message. She crosses the room to flip it over. “Scam callers. Pain in the ass.”

“Oh, but they’re fun,” Rachel says. “I once spent half an hour on the phone with a guy who said he was from Microsoft and needed to run a command prompt on my computer. I almost had him convinced that I didn’t know how to open Internet Explorer.”

“You didn’t.” But Emily’s quite sure she did. A memory looms: sixth grade, huddled together in the closet of Rachel’s bedroom with the Toziers’ new cordless (cordless!) phone, prank calling every business they could find in the phone book. Emily had punched in the numbers, but she was giggling too hard to talk, so Rachel had taken the phone and asked whoever answered if Jack Mehoff was there. Mr. Tozier had caught them after the third call, but it had seemed hilarious while it lasted.

“Serves them right, anyway,” Rachel says with a shrug. “At least they were wasting their time trying to scam me instead of conning some little old lady out of her cat food money.”

“How noble of you,” Emily says, but she’s smiling. She can’t help it. Rachel is still standing at the door, shirt spotted with water from her toothbrush, the ragged ends of her sweatpants dragging on the hotel carpet. She looks . . . comfortable. Emily is wearing a silky pajama set she bought at Nordstrom; the fabric doesn’t breathe, and she can already feel sweat beading behind her knees and under her breasts. It’s the kind of low-level discomfort she’s spent years managing for the sake of dressing appropriately, and she likes to think she’s gotten pretty good at it. But the idea of throwing it all to the wind and sleeping in something soft and shapeless does have a certain appeal.

The fantasy of comfortable sleepwear is shattered a second later, when Rachel says “so, how about what Mike said?”

Right. What Mike said. They reason they’re actually here. “What about what Mike said?” Emily asks. “It sounded like bullshit, but Bev - “

“I know.” Rachel’s frowning now. She steps to the left and sinks down into the armchair sitting by the bedroom door. “And Stan. What Bev was saying, about seeing us all die - “

“But Stan’s not dead,” Emily blurts out. The thought is the only thing keeping her from completely flying off the handle. Bev may have seen all kinds of horrors in their future, but they’re still here and in one piece. They’re _alive_.

“Yeah,” Rachel says. “For now.”

“God, don’t say that!” Emily starts to pace back and forth across the room, running her hands through her hair. “You don’t even know what happened to Stan. Maybe he fell off a ladder. Maybe he got hit by a car crossing the street.”

Rachel scoffs. “Please, like Stan wouldn’t look both ways four times before he stepped onto the crosswalk.”

“Maybe the car came out of nowhere!” Emily jabs a finger at Rachel. “You don’t know, is my point, so we can’t go around basing our decisions on what _might_ have happened when we don’t have any _proof_ \- “

“What about what happened at the restaurant?” Rachel shoots back. “That was sure as hell proof of _something_ , unless we all had a mass hallucination.”

“I don’t know!” Emily stops in the middle of the room, clutching her forehead. “But even if it’s all true, what are we supposed to do about it? We couldn’t do it back in 1989 - “

“We stopped It in 1989.”

“Not permanently!” She wheels around to face Rachel. “Did you get a degree in evil clown hunting between now and then? Because I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what the fuck to do with any of this! And that’s assuming that we don’t all die tonight, if whatever came after us at the restaurant doesn’t come back to finish the job!”

She stops. She’s breathing hard. She hadn’t vocalized the thought before, but it’s been trailing her since they left the Chinese place: that if they’re actually being stalked by an evil clown, or whatever the fuck It is, they have no way of protecting themselves. Who’s to say It would be foiled by a locked door? How can they fight something that changes shape to fit Its environment, that maybe (probably) followed Stan all the way to Atlanta? That’s been stalking Beverly’s dreams for twenty-seven _years_? Emily barely has the upper body strength required to open a pickle jar, what is she supposed to do with any of this? She’s going to die here, in a shitty bedroom in Derry’s shittiest inn, and all because she wandered into something too big and too evil for her to understand when she was only thirteen.

There’s a long pause, then Rachel says, “Will there be strength in numbers, do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Emily shakes her head. “I don’t _know_. I don’t know _anything_.”

“You know a few things,” Rachel says. “Like how toothpaste works.”

“That’s great,” Emily says. “That’s fucking great. I can kill the clown with toothpaste. Great idea, Rachel.”

“I think it was your idea, actually,” Rachel says. She stands up, rubbing her palms against the front of her sweatpants. “I should probably go. Thanks for the, uh, toothpaste.” She pauses. “If the clown gets me overnight, I want you to have my - uh - shit, I don’t think I actually have anything worth passing on. Unless you want my novelty sock collection? I’ve got a pair covered in dinosaurs getting abducted by aliens.”

“I don’t want your dinosaur socks,” Emily says, although the image does make her want to smile a little. The image of the socks, that is, not the one of walking into Rachel’s room in the morning and finding her chewed-up carcass spread across the hotel bed. The wind is picking up outside, rattling the screen in her window - obviously no one’s done any maintenance on this place in years. She thinks of spending the night listening to the rattling sound, tense under the covers while she waits for something to slither under the door and towards her bed. “Or,” she says. “You could stay.”

Rachel blinks. “I could . . . ?”

“Stay. Here. Tonight.” Emily gestures at the bed. “It’s a double, there’s room for both of us. And . . . there might be strength in numbers. Like you said.”

Under any other circumstances, she would think she was going insane. She hasn’t seen Rachel for _decades_ , it’s been hours since they met up again, and she’s already inviting her to sleep in the same bed? That’s fucking insane. She and her _husband_ barely sleep in the same bed - they have a king, and they usually both roll over to the far side of the mattress. On the rare occasions when Max spoons up against her and puts an arm around her in his sleep, it brings a crushing sense of claustrophobia down on Emily’s chest. And in a double bed, there’s really no way to avoid touching each other; she’d be pressed up against Rachel all night, the sticky sweat of late-August body heat rubbing off on her pajamas. The idea ought to make her nauseous.

But. These aren’t normal circumstances. And if she’s going to be awake all night waiting for the clown to get her, she’d at least like some company. Being annoyed to death by Rachel is preferable to - whatever It would do, if It caught her.

“Emily Kaspbrak, it’s like you think I’m easy,” Rachel says, though she’s already stepping across the room and flopping down onto the bed. “I warn you, I will raise the alarm if you try to bad touch me after the lights go out. I at least require dinner and a movie before I let anyone go below the waist.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Emily says, sliding into the bed beside Rachel. “I’m married.”

Rachel goes quiet - quieter than expected - and Emily silently kicks herself for several moments before she says, quietly, “Yeah, I guess you are.” She rolls over on her side, facing the wall. “Well, your husband can rest assured, I have no intentions of defiling his property. Hey, do you think he’d challenge me to a duel if I did? I took a semester of fencing in college.”

“Fuck off,” Emily says again, “you did not.” She reaches out and switches the lamp off, plunging the room into semi-darkness. The only light comes from the half-cracked curtains, and the ever-present blinking green light on her phone. “Shut up. Go to sleep.”

“Yes ma’am,” Rachel says, then lets out an exaggerated snore. Emily elbows her, and she falls silent.

Apart from the rattling window screen - which there really isn’t any help for - the room is quiet. Quieter than she’s used to, actually. They have a nice house on the outskirts of New York, but it’s close enough to the freeway that the sound of cars and trucks is never far away. Sometimes Emily can hear an ambulance go screaming by, and she tenses under the covers, even though she knows logically there’s no reason to be afraid. Just part of her whole thing about hospitals, she guesses. It’s weird for someone who works in a doctor’s office to be so hospital-averse, but Max is a GP: any actual serious cases get passed immediately on to someone higher up on the medical food chain. Hospitals make Emily think of her mother - of the last, waning months of her life when she’d been confined to a hospital bed as the cancer ate through her body, but also before that, when they’d first moved to Iowa and ferried Grandma to and from Mercy Medical Centre so that the doctors could continually adjust her medications in the hopes of stretching her life out for a few more months. And even before that - although this is getting into the period where her memories turn muddy - she vaguely recalls being in and out of the hospital herself, though never overnight and never for any clearly defined purpose. Maybe Rachel had had a point about her huffing hand sanitizer.

She turns her head on the pillow to look at Rachel, whose face has already gone slack with sleep. If she’s faking, she’s doing a pretty good job. Now that the lights are out, Emily’s plan feels a little silly; if she can’t fight the clown off herself, what’s Rachel going to do? A semester of fencing lessons notwithstanding, it’s not like either of them stand much of a chance against an interdimensional, shapeshifting monster. But she still somehow feels comforted by having Rachel here; like this is how things were supposed to be, if she hadn’t taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way in the past twenty-seven years. Maybe it’s just the memory of their childhood sleepovers - she still can’t remember much, but they must have had them - the comfort of familiarity buttressing her against fear. It won’t stand up against any real threat, but it’s nice just to have that placebo.

* * *

“Good _morning_ , starshine!” Rachel yanks so hard on the duvet that she nearly sends Emily tumbling out of bed. “Up and at ‘em!”

“Rachel, what the fuck!” Emily props herself up on one elbow as she glares at Rachel, who looks unbearably smug. “I set my alarm, you didn’t have to do that!”

“Well I don’t know when you set it for,” Rachel says, still tugging on a corner of the duvet, “but it’s eight-thirty, and I’ve already been up for half an hour. Mike said we were meeting at nine, remember? Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey.”

Emily resists the urge to bury her head under the pillow. “You don’t even eat bacon.”

“Au contraire,” Rachel says, “I absolutely eat bacon. I just feel weird about it afterwards. You’re thinking of Stan.”

Now that she thinks of it, she can kind of remember sitting across the breakfast table from Rachel, making exaggerated gagging noises as she dipped her bacon in a puddle of maple syrup. It must have been at Rachel’s house, though, because her mother never let her have syrup on anything. On the occasions when she was over at the Toziers’, they let her and Rachel eat what they wanted, and she’d made herself sick on towering stacks of pancakes more than once.

Then the first part of what Rachel said sinks in. “Eight-thirty? Are you serious? How - “ She reaches over to the bedside table and grabs her phone. FIFTEEN MISSED CALLS is scrolling across the screen, and then she remembers: she put the damn thing on silent so it would stop ringing. It must have taken out the alarm, too. “Fuck. When did we go to bed last night?”

“Uh, ten? Maybe ten-thirty?” Emily belatedly realized that Rachels’s gotten dressed, although her outfit - jeans, a loud Hawaiian shirt, and a the same chunky glasses she wore when she was thirteen - is hardly more presentable than what she wore to bed. She’s clearly washed her hair, too - the ends are still wet. “It was pretty early. Why?”

Emily just scrambles out of bed. She can’t wrap her head around the idea that she actually slept for ten straight hours. Even without her alarm, she rarely manages more than six. She certainly didn’t expect the lumpy hotel bed she and Rachel had shared last night to be the thing that finally knocked her out for a full sleep cycle. “I’ve got to shower. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Sure thing. Oh, by the way - “ Rachel nods to the end table next to the armchair. “The continental breakfast was pretty pathetic, but I grabbed you some muffins. They’re blueberry, I think.” She frowns. “Or raisin bran. It’s honestly kind of hard to tell. I know you’re probably, like, vegan and gluten free, but I don’t think Derry really goes in for that stuff.”

“Uh.” The unexpectedness of the gesture (did Rachel just basically bring her breakfast in bed?) in concert with everything else going on is kind of breaking Emily’s brain. “Thanks. It’s - I’ll make do. It’s fine.” She’s acutely aware that her hair is sticking up in all directions, and there are probably sweat stains under her arms. “See you in, like. Fifteen minutes.”

In the bathroom, there’s still a wet ring around the drain of the bathtub, rust flaking from the sides in brown-red patches. Gingerly, Emily steps around the grout gathered on the floor and into the tub, cranking the water up to the highest heat possible before she steps under the spray. At home, she has special shampoos and conditioners, designed for sensitive scalps; but she forgot to pack them in her headlong rush out of the house, so she has to make do with the little bottle of two-in-one sitting on the counter. She winces as it squeaks through her hair, rubbing a bit harder than it strictly necessary. When she gets back to New York, she thinks, she’ll go in for a full scalp treatment at the salon. She wraps up her shower as fast as she can, drying off with a towel that already feels damp, and yanks on a dress from her suitcase that’s only slightly wrinkled.

Rachel blinks at her when she comes down the stairs. “Wow.”

“Do not say _anything_ ,” Emily hisses at her. She isn’t sure what part of her appearance Rachel is about to comment on, but she knows she doesn’t want to hear any of it. The good mood left over from her long night’s sleep only lasted about ten minutes after waking up; now she feels more jittery than ever, ready to snap at the first person who looks at her cross-eyed. If her newly recovered memories are anything to go by, that person is probably going to be Rachel.

“Hey, I wasn’t going to,” Rachel says, falling into step with her as they leave the townhouse. Unsurprisingly, there’s no one at the front desk. She sticks her hands in her pockets and makes it about fifty seconds before adding, “I was just wondering – “

“- _do not_ – “

“- if you’re actually allowed to wear those dresses if you’re not a kindergarten teacher,” Rachel finishes. Emily whips her head around to glare at her. “Like, I thought they’d ask for proof of employment at the store before they’d sell one to you. Hey, do you have any goldfish crackers in your pocket? I’m hungry.”

“Fuck off, you look like a bartender in a shitty dive bar,” Emily snaps, and speeds up. Rachel, infuriatingly, keeps pace with her. “This is a normal dress for my actual job, where I get paid to do actual work, instead of – “ She takes a deep breath through her nose, biting the inside of her cheek. “Instead of – telling shitty jokes for a laugh track, for your information.”

“Ouch.” Rachel doesn’t look hurt at all. “So you’ve seen the show, then? I kind of assumed you only watched the Documentary Channel. I’m flattered you actually cared enough to check it out.”

“I already told you I watched it,” Emily mutters, sticking her own hands in her pockets. True, the dress does look like something a kindergarten teacher would wear – it’s a maxi dress, sleeveless, with buttons down the front - but at least the pockets come in handy. “I didn’t watch it for you, I didn’t even know you were on it. I didn’t know who you _were_.”

Rachel’s quiet for a few seconds, then says, “I’d say that hurts, but I didn’t remember you either. Isn’t that weird?”

“It’s not that weird.” Emily shrugs. “We grew up, we forgot being kids. It happens to everybody.”

“I don’t think it does, though,” Rachel says. “At least, not like this. We all knew each other for fifteen years, don’t you think that would make more of an impression? I didn’t remember _any_ of you, until Mike called, and then it all just – “

“Rushed back,” Emily says slowly. She’s thinking of that phone call, the sense of a stone dropping into her stomach when she’d heard the words, _it’s Mike Hanlon, from Derry_. She’d never thought much about her childhood; it had been a source of private pride, that she was such a well-adjusted adult that she never felt the need to dwell on the past. Now she’s wondering if she was ever well-adjusted to begin with, or if she’d just had the dubious fortune to have had her early memories wallpapered over so that she could proceed to adulthood unencumbered by any lingering worry about what had happened on Derry. If it weren’t for the fact that the thing that had stolen her memories was a child-eating clown, she might consider it a kindness.

“Yeah.” With every step, Rachel scuffs the pavement in front of her, kicking a pebble ahead with her toe. “I didn’t even realize I was missing anything, until Mike called. I just – there was always this hole, you know? And I just thought that was normal, like everyone had something missing that they were trying to fill.”

“I guess.” Emily shrugs, uncomfortable. She doesn’t think she’s been trying to fill a hole. She’s just been . . . living her life. It’s fine. Maybe a let-down in some areas, but what life isn’t? She has a home. She has a husband. These are all the things she wanted as a kid, she’s pretty sure. It’s what most kids want, anyway.

“I just,” Rachel says abruptly. She’s staring down at her sneakers. “I missed you guys. I didn’t realize it, but I did.” She clears her throat. “And I think, uh. If I had a best friend back then, it was you.”

Emily says nothing. She’s thinking, again, of those uncovered memories of sleepovers at Rachel’s house: of the two of them, muffling their giggles under the covers so that Rachel’s parents won’t come in to check on them. Of late mornings at the breakfast table, Rachel concocting weirder and weirder food combinations, trying to make Emily gag. Of huddling together over whatever book they were reading that week, bumping foreheads and arguing over when to turn the page. Emily shoving Rachel and accusing her of not actually reading at all, which only prompted Rachel to recite the paragraph she’d just finished in whatever silly voice amused her most that day.

Rachel still hasn’t said anything or looked up; she’s still staring at her toes. Emily realizes, belatedly, that she’s waiting for her to say something. “I think so,” she says. “I think – yeah. We were best friends.” The thought of having a _best friend_ is jarring; when was the last time she even had a _close_ friend? But once upon a time, it had been Rachel.

“Cool,” Rachel says, voice overbright. “When all this is over, we can get one of those BFF lockets and split it in half.”

“Absolutely fucking _not_ ,” Emily says, but she’s picturing the charm necklaces girls wore when they were kids – ugly, plastic, in painful shades of pink. The mental image makes her laugh in spite of herself.

* * *

Once, when Emily was still a toddler – before her dad died – she and her parents had gone on a family vacation to Portland to visit her father’s extended family. They had gone to Crescent Beach, and two of Emily’s older cousins had somehow managed to get her mother to agree to let them take Emily wading on the shoreline. They’d started with one cousin holding each of her hands, but she’d torn away from them at some point and went running into the spray, shrieking with glee while her cousins chased her and shouted for her to come back.

The wave had come up suddenly, so suddenly that she hadn’t even seen it; she just knew that she was on solid ground one minute, and swept up the next. Water had come rushing up over her face, and she’d been suspended in the surf for several interminable moments, blind and deaf to everything but the salt water that rushed in her ears. She hadn’t had time to be frightened before one of her cousins seized her under her armpits and yanked her, spluttering, out of the water; she only knew that everything familiar and safe had vanished in the blink of an eye, and the new world under the water was too alien to even intimidate her.

It was another memory that hadn’t crossed her mind in years, although less due to Derry magic and more because of how young she’d been at the time. But it rears up to the forefront of her thoughts again as she steps down the ladder into the clubhouse, because it was the same overpowering feeling she remembered from being in the sea – that the world as she knew it had been knocked out from under her feet, and she was left trying to recalibrate herself in this strange new reality.

Memories come pouring in like waves. There was the loose board where she had lost Ben’s paddle ball; there was the hammock, almost rotted away to nothing, where she and Rachel had squirmed and kicked at each other in a half-hearted struggle for dominance; there were the movie posters, _The Lost Boys_ and _Back to The Future_ , which Bill had brought in and nailed to the boards with his dad’s stolen hammer. There, near the dirt floor, was the carving she’d done one afternoon, morose and snivelling while she listened to Joy Division on her Walkman.

_Room full of people, room for just one,_

_If I can't break out now, the time just won't come_

She sinks down to her knees on the floor, sitting back on her heels as everyone talks. It seems like she’s not the only one newly overcome by memories: everyone has a slightly stunned expression on their face, like they just got clotheslined and are lying on the ground, trying to figure out what just happened. If Emily squints, she can see all their younger selves where their current selves are standing. Sense memory is a powerful thing: most of the clubhouse as she knew it has rotted away in the intervening years, but it still smells like it always did – rich and damp and earthy. That’s what puts her back in 1989, more than anything else. It smells like home.

She kneels there, simultaneously numb and hypersensitive, while Mike explains his plan. Mike seems to have a plan for everything, and – well, he’s certainly had time to come up with them. And while every instinct in her screams that splitting up is the worst possible idea they could go with – she’s seen horror movies, she knows how this works – she’s also quietly relieved to have a moment to herself. She’s still too fuzzy-headed to make any kind of conversation work, and she doesn’t want to deal with anyone prodding her to talk. She’d glanced once at Rachel since they descended into the clubhouse, then quickly looked away. Rachel’s face is stretched out into a manic grin, the kind she only gets when (Emily is starting to remember) she’s trying to distract from something painful. The kind of face she’d made when they were eight and she’d fallen out of a tree and broke her ankle, or when Henry Bowers shoved her facefirst into the water fountain so hard that she blacked out for a second. It’s the kind of smile that presages a breakdown when her self-restraint runs out, and Emily doesn’t think she can bear to be there when it happens.

Instead, she sets back out for town, self-consciously speeding up to avoid having to walk side-by-side with any of the others. She only just avoids breaking into a flat-out run, but she still manages to make it back to the main road in under fifteen minutes. When she was a kid, it always seemed to take longer than that – but then, she’d had shorter legs.

Once she’s back in Derry proper, she comes to a halt on the sidewalk, turning in slow circles as she tries to figure out where to go. A token, Mike said – where the fuck is she going to find a token? How is she even supposed to know what a token is? Bev had asked Mike as much (although in much nicer terms) and he’d only said “you’ll just know,” in a tone of voice that made him sound slightly stoned. Maybe he was. She hasn’t forgotten Bill getting drugged last night; she definitely won’t be accepting any drinks Mike offers her in the future.

He’d said they should look in places where they were that summer - places they’d been while they were all separated. That time period had fallen inside the lines of when she’d been recovering from her broken arm, which meant her mother had kept her as close to home as possible. To avoid hurting herself again, she’d said; she had not said (until Emily pressed the issue) that she also wanted to keep Emily away from those nasty, rowdy children whose fault it was that she broke her arm in the first place. Since Emily couldn’t very well have explained the circumstances under which she’d actually broken her arm, she hadn’t had much in the way of counter-arguments.

Her house, then. Her house and the pharmacy; and she was closer to her house. Yesterday, she remembers seeing a For Sale sign on the front lawn, which is another one of those coincidences that feel uncomfortably like fate. She can actually go and poke around in the house, and no one will think anything’s amiss. Everything is falling into place, and she doesn’t feel good about it at all.

When the current homeowner answers the door, Emily puts on her best receptionist smile and says, “Hi! I’m here to see the house? Donna said I could swing by this afternoon.” Donna is the real estate agent’s name. Emily knows this because her name is on the sign, and also because she’s the one who handled the sale when Emily and her mother moved away in 1992. Emily wonders if she’ll come back in twenty-seven years and find Donna, still here, selling the house all over again.

The woman at the door looks startled, but musters a smile. “Well – sure. I didn’t know we had anyone coming by today, but I must have forgot.” She steps aside, ushering Emily into the front hall. “Can I show you around?”

“No,” Emily says, “no, that’s all right.” She’s seeing double: there’s the house as it is now, well-lit and airy and painted in shades of off-white and light blue, and the house as she remembers it, dark and close and smelling of dried flowers. From where she’s standing in the hallway, she can see through to the kitchen: the Formica table she remembers has been replaced with a long wooden bench sitting against the wall. There are children’s drawings held to the fridge with magnets, and a shelf mounted on the backsplash that’s filled with cookbooks. Her mother had only owned the Better Homes New Cook Book, and it had rarely been opened. When she’d pulled it off the shelf to pack, she’d had to blow a layer of dust off the top.

The homeowner – whose name Emily didn’t catch – steps aside and watches as Emily walks through the kitchen and into the living room. When she’d lived here, there had been a creaky old armchair seated across from the television, kitty-corner from the sofa. Now there’s just a sofa, sitting back from the TV mounted on the wall. A small child is lying on the floor, chin resting on their folded arms while a cartoon flickers on the screen. They don’t look up when Emily stops in the doorway.

There’d been a folding table between the chair and the couch, she remembers; that was where they’d eaten most of their dinners. Afterwards, Emily’s mother would put an arm around her and pull her close while watching the nightly news. Being pressed against her mother’s warm bulk had been stifling, but on the few occasions when she’d tried to squirm away, her mother had given her such a sad look that she’d crawled right back to where she’d started. Sometimes she had pretended to fall asleep, and that had usually worked; if her mother noticed, she would pick her up and carry her up to her room. Emily had kept her eyes squeezed shut all the while, and only breathed a sigh of relief once her mother had tucked her into bed and gone back downstairs.

The stairs, at least, haven’t moved, although the new owners have removed the carpet runner. Her mother’s room is at the very top of the stairs, which had always made sneaking downstairs a logistical nightmare. Sneaking out had been easier, if only because she could shimmy down the tree, but she’d always been deathly afraid that her mother would hear when she opened the window. She’d slept like a cat, always ready to wake up and spring into action if she thought Emily was up to something. Emily only glances through the open bedroom door – if there’s a token here for her, it won’t be in her mother’s room – and sees a light blue bedspread and white walls. The new homeowners seem to like blue and white. They aren’t Emily’s favourite colours, personally, but she prefers them to the golds and greens of her childhood.

Her own room had been an addition added to the house when she was three; it sits at the far end of the hall. The hall itself, like the stairs, has been stripped of carpeting; the floor is all hardwood now. It makes no noise as Emily walks down the hall; the only sound is the soft shushing of her socks against the wood. She pauses in the doorway, seeing double for what must be the tenth time this afternoon. The window is still there, and the closet door; but everything else she remembers is gone.

The pink walls are now light yellow; the white metal bedframe, which they had broken down and taken to Iowa with them, is replaced with an honest-to-god race car bed. The prints that had hung on her walls (ballet dancers, flowers, cats; all her mother’s choices) are also long gone; instead, the room is decorated with little shelves that hold stuffed animals and toy cars, and a couple of what she thinks are Disney movie posters. Everything seems car-themed. She hopes that whichever kid lives here now picked out the theme for themselves, and hasn’t had it imposed on them by the whims of a parent obsessed with NASCAR.

She takes a step inside. The window is open, a gentle breeze ruffling the curtains. Like the rest of the house, it feels open and light. This isn’t the home she remembers. She doesn’t know why she ever thought it would be – why would the new owners have retained her mother’s mid-seventies chic sensibilities? No one in 2016 paints their house gold and olive green. She sits down heavily on the bed, half expecting it to crack under her weight. She isn’t a kid anymore, and this isn’t her home. What is she even doing?

“Emily?”

She whips her head around, searching for the person who just said her name. No one in this house knows who she is, so who the hell - ?

“ _Emilyyyyyyyyyyyyyy_.” The voice is a sickly sing-song, and it makes her skin crawl. “Emily, why did you run away?”

A gust of wind blows the door shut with a sharp _bang_. She leaps off the bed, twisting around. There’s no one in sight.

“This isn’t funny,” she says to the empty room. Her answer is a quiet moan, followed by an echoing sob. The crawling sensation intensifies. It’s the sound her mother would make, but at the same time, not – it’s too high-pitched, too squeaky. Her mother’s voice was lower and throatier than that. This is someone who hadn’t really known Sonia Kaspbrak doing a bad impression, and she’s not scared of it. She’s _not_.

The door swings open, and Emily yelps, taking a tripping step backwards. The thing standing in the doorway is, like the voice, a passable imitation of her mother – not one that would hold up under closer inspection, but close enough to make her choke on a throat full of vomit. It’s her mother as she had been in those last few months, body ravaged and melted away with cancer, bulbous black tumours straining at the skin of her face until it cracks and starts to trickle blood ( _but no, her mother hadn’t had any visible tumours, she’d never looked like that_ -) her eyes sunken low in her sockets and glowing a queasy, bilious red.

“You were supposed to take care of me,” the Sonia-thing says, lurching towards her. Emily scrambles further backwards, but there’s nowhere to go but the wall. “I always took care of _you_ , Emily. But you didn’t listen to me, and now where are you? Back with those deviant children.”

“Mommy.” Her back hits the wall. “Mommy, stop.” It’s not her mother, and she _knows_ it’s not her mother, but knowing something intellectually and communicating the same fact to the screaming panic centres of her brain are two separate things. She gropes for the windowsill, wondering if she could still squirm out and down the tree. Would the branches still hold her weight?

“Emily, listen to me,” the thing croons. It’s that, more than anything, that makes her want to throw up. It’s the closest the thing has come to actually mimicking Sonia’s tone of voice, and it’s activating every flight instinct she has. “You don’t want to do this, sweetie. You can go home.”

Emily almost laughs. _Of course_ she doesn’t want to do this. The noise that emerges from her mouth is less of a laugh and more a shriek of pure hysteria. “Get away from me!”

“You don’t know what’s good for you.” As the thing advances, its voice breaks down, burbling and wheezing with every word. Emily feels like she’s watching her mother fall apart in front of her eyes. “I know what you need, Emily. Listen to me.”

Emily grabs the object nearest at hand – a hardback copy of _The Runaway Bunny_ – and flings it at the thing. “Stop it!”

The corner of the book glances off the thing’s forehead and splits one of the tumours open. Black bile starts to ooze down its face. The thing’s expression contorts into a scowl, and it lunges across the room and grabs the front of Emily’s dress. It’s drooling black ooze, letting it drip down onto Emily’s clothes. “How could you?” Now it’s crying too, thick black tears that splatter onto Emily’s face. “How could you treat your mother like this? I only want you to be safe, Emmy.” The thing shoves one of its hands into her face: it’s holding an inhaler. “It’s time for your medicine.”

Emily reaches up behind her back and grabs the windowsill. Launching herself up and out of the thing’s clutches, she shoves herself backwards and nearly falls out of the window. She can still fit, thank God, and she twists in mid-leap to grab one of the branches. It bows under her weight, but doesn’t snap. It takes less time to scramble down the tree now than it did when she was thirteen, and she doesn’t waste a second of it, sprinting out of the yard as soon as her feet brush the grass. She’s nearly two blocks away, panting heavily, when she realizes she left her shoes at her old house. The gravel has shredded her socks, and the soles of her feet are bleeding.

“Fuck it,” she says, bent double, hands on her knees as she tries to catch her breath. “Fuck those shoes. They can keep them.” She hopes the house’s current occupants have some use for a pair of size seven penny loafers, because she certainly won’t be back for them.

* * *

Later, after everything – after Henry Bowers sticks a knife in her face and Rachel kills him with a tomahawk, after they all climb down into the sewers again, after she spears Pennywise with a fence pole and Rachel grabs her and pulls her out of the way of Its barbed tentacles – after the clown is dead, reduced to a slimy pulp crushed and stinking in their hands – after all that, Emily finds herself sitting on the fire escape of the Derry Townhouse, hugging her knees and trying not to think.

It’s not easy. She has a lot to think about.

“Mind if I join you?”

She glances up. Bill is standing in the doorway, holding a bottle of Scotch by the neck. He smiles, a little sheepishly. “I was hoping for some fresh air, but if you’d rather be alone . . .”

“No. It’s fine.” She shifts over, and Bill sits down on the fire escape beside her. He unscrews the cap of the bottle and takes a deep pull from it. He makes a face. “It’s been awhile.”

“Since you drank?”

He nods, taking another pull. “I . . . overdid it a bit, in my twenties. Swore it off after my wedding.” The sheepish look returns. “My wife would kill me if she knew I was doing this.”

Emily eyes the bottle. She’s never drank Scotch in her life – never had anything stronger than champagne – but if this isn’t the occasion to start, she doesn’t know what is. “Can I have some of that?”

“I – “ Bill’s eyebrows go up. “Sure, I guess.” He swabs the lip of the bottle with his sleeve and passes it to her. Emily tips the bottle back against her mouth and takes in a swallow; she chokes almost immediately, barely managing to keep from spraying a cloud of alcohol and spittle across the fire escape. Her throat is on fire. It feels like getting water up her nose, only worse.

Bill thumps her on the back as she coughs. “You okay? It’s good stuff, but it’s not really beginner-friendly.”

Emily’s eyes are streaming. She wipes them with the back of her hand. “Is it that obvious?” Dumb question. Only a beginner would be dumb enough to chug it down and then spew it back up.

“Well.” Bill sits forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I guess it’s just because I know you.” He frowns. “Or – knew you. Or know you again. I’m not really sure how all this works.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Emily hunches forward, retreating into the hoodie Ben loaned her. She’d had to borrow a whole new outfit after getting back from her old house; she’s gone into the sewers dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt from Bev, and then _those_ had gotten destroyed when they waded through the sewage. Just now, she’s wearing jeans from Rachel (she had to cinch the waist with a belt) a shirt from her own suitcase, and Ben’s oversized hoodie. She feels like, by the time they all go home, their luggage will all be so mixed up that they won’t know which item of clothing belongs to who. She imagines Max’s reaction when she arrives home with a suitcase full of strange men’s clothes, and feels a dark chuckle rising in the back of her throat. “Does your wife know you’re here?”

“She knows I’m in Maine,” Bill says. Emily thinks, _that’s not an answer_ , but then Bill pre-empts her.  
“That’s evasive, I know. But we didn’t really talk that much before I left. We . . . there’s been some fighting lately.” He stares out across the nearby roofs. “Maybe it had to do with all this. I don’t know.”

“All this?”

“Just . . .” He waves a hand in the air. “We’d all forgotten all this stuff, but it never really left us, did it? It was all bubbling under the surface. I don’t even know if I’m the same person I was before I came back. If you’ve lost a chunk of your life, can you be the same person after you get it back?”

Emily shivers. “That’s grim.”

“Is it?” Bill shrugs. “I don’t know. I kind of like the idea of a do-over. We can go back and fix whatever we fucked up along the way.”

Emily tries to imagine what Bill – who is, by his own admission, a famous author with multiple film adaptations under his belt – considers his fuck-ups. Maybe it’s connected to the alcohol, or his fights with his wife; but he at least has plenty of foundation to build on, if he decides to blow up his life. She tries to think of what she could do, if everything she relied on disappeared tomorrow. The list is pretty short.

“What about you?” he says, like he somehow knew what she was thinking. Maybe he does. Maybe getting their memories back also gave them telepathy. Weirder things have happened. Weirder things have happened _to them_ in the past fourty-eight hours. “What are you going to do now that all this is over?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. Go home, I guess. Try to – “ She stops. She’d been about to say “explain all this to my husband,” but the truth is, she _can’t_ explain it to Max. Can’t even try. If he’d been contemplating shuttling her off to Bellevue when she announced she was going to Maine, he wouldn’t even give it a second thought if she came back talking about evil clowns and giant spiders. She wouldn’t see the outside of a padded cell until she was fifty. “Try to pick up where I left off,” she says instead. “Go back to work. Apologize to my husband for taking off.”

Bill laughs. “Yeah, I think we all owe our spouses a few apologies after this.” He looks at her, expression curious. “Didn’t you say you work for your husband?”

“I’m a receptionist in his office,” she says, which is exactly as evasive of an answer as the one Bill gave her earlier. The blunter version of the truth – that Max sets her hours and signs her paychecks and generally dictates her comings and goings as far as work is concerned – she keeps to herself. It’s too easy to misinterpret.

“Huh.” Bill’s expression is rapidly solidifying into something she doesn’t like. “Is that what you went to school for? I remember you talking about wanting to be a lawyer.”

“I would have been a disaster at law school,” she says. “Too disorganized.”

“Being a receptionist is all about organization, isn’t it?” She wants very badly to think that Bill’s just being a smartass, but he still looks genuinely curious. Bastard.

“Different kind of organizing,” she says. “Besides, you have to be smart. I mean, I’m smart, but I’m not _lawyer_ smart.” She shrugs. “My job’s fine. We can’t all be ridiculously successful millionaires.”

“Fair enough.” He’s quiet for several long moments after that. Emily stares over the bars of the fire escape, to where the treetops are ruffling in the summer breeze. It’s warm out, but she still feels cold enough to huddle into Ben’s hoodie. Or maybe that’s just the lingering effects of Mike’s ritual – she feels safer when she’s with the others.

“I kind of wish we could stay,” Bill says softly. “Not in Derry, but just – with each other. I missed you guys. I didn’t realize how much.”

“I missed you all too,” Emily says, and surprises herself by saying it. The longer she spends around her friends, the more she can feel the solid certainty of her normal life crumbling around the edges. All her life, she’s been told to want safety, sought it out like she was supposed to, let herself be wrapped in protective batting by people who said she needed taking care of, that they wanted to take care of her.

Bev handed her a fence post and said, _this kills monsters_. Rachel grabbed her hand and told her, _you’re braver than you think_. And she’d lunged at Pennywise, mouth gaping in a scream that spent years building in her lungs, and speared It through the heart. Hadn’t managed to finish the job, but – still. It was a strange feeling, this readiness to fight. Running towards something terrifying instead of backing away.

“Bev said something similar,” Bill replies when Emily says as much out loud. “When we were kids. Said she wanted to run towards something instead of away from it. I always thought that was kind of poetic.”

Emily pulls the collar of the hoodie up close around her neck. “I don’t know if it’s poetic,” she says. “But it’s true.”

They sit there for another fifteen minutes in silence. Bill offers the whiskey to Emily again, and she sips it cautiously this time. It still burns, but not as violently as it did the first time. She’ll never be a big drinker, she thinks, but she could get used to this. Just to sharing a bottle with someone, passing it back and forth until it’s empty. The quiet trust of it all.

Bill gets up and goes inside, saying he has to make some phone calls. Emily does too, but she stays where she is for awhile longer. The last time she glanced at her phone, she had sixty missed calls, all from the same number. No one else from her regular life is looking for her; just Max. That probably means something.

“Time to run towards something,” she mutters to herself, and heaves herself up off the fire escape. She has to have this conversation sooner or later.

He picks up on the first ring. “Emily?” He sounds – well, he sounds worried. But he also sounds angry. Like a mother whose toddler just dashed out into traffic. “Emily, where have you _been_? I called you dozens of times – “

“I texted you yesterday,” she says. Has it really been less than two days? “And I told you where I was going.”

“You didn’t take any of my calls!” He’s almost shouting – his voice isn’t loud, but it’s firm. The kind of voice that commands attention. “I tried to call the police, but they wouldn’t look for you! Do you have any idea how dangerous it was to just take off like that, no medical supervision, no oversight, no plan – “

“I had a plan.” She’s surprised at herself; she’s never actually pushed back like this before. “I told you. I texted you to let you know when I got here. What else was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to _take my calls_!”

Emily thinks again of her mother on the porch: screaming after her, begging her to stay home where she’d be safe. She thinks of the thing that wasn’t her mother in her old bedroom, thrusting the inhaler at her face. The inhaler is long gone, buried under the debris of the old Neibolt place. Max’s medicine cabinet and prescription pad are back in New York. The only pills she has now are Tylenol.

“When you get back,” he says, “you’ll need a full workup with Dr. Dahl. I’ll make the appointment now, and you can fly in on the red eye. I’m worried about you, Emily. None of this is normal behaviour. You could be having a manic episode.”

“I’ve never had a manic episode in my life,” she says. Dr. Dahl is a psychiatrist, a med school friend of Max’s; he’s the one who gave her the lithium prescription. “I just went on a trip for a few days, Max. I’m sorry it was on such short notice, but I got a call from an old friend, and it was urgent.”

He splutters on the other end of the line. “An old _friend_? What old friend? I’ve never heard of this guy. No real friend would ask you to do something like this. You’re too trusting, Emily. You should have asked me – “

“If I could go?” Something he said is snagged on her mind: he’d called the police. What were the police supposed to do? Drag her back to New York? Maybe she hadn’t been that far off when she speculated he might try to section her. Luckily, the NYPD had better things to do than chase wayward spouses across state lines. But what if they’d agreed? What if she gets back and they’re waiting for her?

She takes a deep breath. The police won’t be waiting for her when she lands in New York; that’s not their job. And besides, an adult can’t be arrested for leaving town of their own free will, no matter what their spouse has to say about it. Max will be the only one waiting for her at the airport. He’ll be ready to bundle her into the car and drive her straight to Dr. Dahl’s office, where she’ll be given another prescription and probably some kind of diagnosis. She went crazy, obviously. Why else would she want to leave? Why else would she want to do _anything_ that wasn’t Max’s idea?

She stares down at the phone in her hand. She’ll be safe if she goes back to New York. Everything will be ordinary again. She’ll undoubtedly be medicated into sedateness, the way she was after her mother had died, when she and Max first moved in together. Things would be – okay. Not wonderful, but okay. It would be what her mother had wanted for her. Everything in her life has been what her mother wanted.

 _You don’t know what’s good for you_.

“Max,” she says. He’s still talking on the other end of the line, something about taking a vacation so she could “spend some time calming down.” He doesn’t answer her. “Max,” she says, a little louder. “Max, I’m not coming back.”

He stutters off into silence. It feels like a test: she can still snatch her words back in the gap he’s left for her. She doesn’t.

“Wh- what are you talking about? he says finally. “What do you mean, you’re not coming back? Where else would you go?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “But I’m not coming back to New York. Or the office. I’m sorry I haven’t given two weeks notice, but under the circumstances – “

“The _circumstances_?”

“I want a divorce.” She can’t quite believe the words coming out of her mouth. “I’m sorry this is all so sudden, I really am. But I’m not coming back.”

More spluttering. Then: “You don’t even have any money! How can you even afford a lawyer?”

Well. There is that. “I’ll figure it out,” she says. “And once I get one, I’ll have them get in touch.” She _doesn’t_ actually know how you go about getting a lawyer when you have approximately a thousand dollars to your name. She’s sure she’ll end up with alimony – the whole arrangement with her salary is, she knows, resting on shaky legal ground to begin with. But she doesn’t have the alimony yet, so any cheque she writes will inevitably bounce. She’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she says. Max seems to have lost all power of coherent thought, reeling from one half-formed idea to another: she doesn’t have money, she can’t look for a job without references, this is all crazy, they can work this out if she just comes back, whatever she’s upset about it fixable, she really needs to see Dr. Dahl – but Emily listens to none of it. “Goodbye,” she says, and hangs up.

The phone starts to ring seconds after she hits the little red button. She contemplates it for a second, then steps back out onto the fire escape. After prying the back open and removing the SIM card, she leans over the railing and lets it fall to the pavement below. It shatters on impact, sending tiny pieces of plastic scattering across the parking lot. She’ll have to go down and clean that up later.

Later is later, though. Just now, she wants to go down to the lounge and see if anyone wants to drink with her.

She finds Bev in the lounge, and the two of them curl up on the chaise with a bottle of wine between them. Bev drinks the lion’s share; Emily already feels tipsy from the whiskey. Tipsy enough that she leans in close to Bev and says, louder than she intended to, “I’m getting a divorce!”

Bev grins at her, mouth stained red with lipstick and wine. “I am too!” she says. “We should start a club!” And they both laugh and laugh until Ben and Bill walk through and look at them both like they’ve lost their minds.

“I want to break shit,” she says to Bev later, once the wine bottle has been depleted and they’ve both slid down almost to the floor. “I was so _good_ , Bev. I was good for _years_. I did everything right. I never even yelled. I want to – “ She gestures wildly. “I want to _break shit_. I want to throw things. I want to swear.”

“Swear!” Bev says. Her pupils are wide and dark. “Swear right now! Throw the glass, there’s nobody around to stop you!”

Emily doesn’t think twice. She picks up the wine tumbler and lobs it across the room. “Fuck!” she yells, gleeful echoes bouncing off the walls. “Fuck, fuck, motherfuck! Fuck you, Max!”

“Fuck you, Max!” Bev echoes. She throws her own glass after Emily’s. “Fuck you, Tom!”

“Yeah!” She hasn’t got anything left to throw, so she just tosses her hands in the air. “Fuck you, Mom!”

“Fuck you, Mrs. Kaspbrak!” Bev’s grin is wild, gleeful. “Fuck you, Dad!”

“Fuck you, Mr. Marsh!” There’s still an illicit thrill to swearing at Bev’s dad, for all he’s been dead for years. He’s still an adult in her mind, and of course swearing at adults was verboten. _She’s_ the adult now, though, and she can swear at whoever she likes. Which reminds her of all the asshole patients who passed through the waiting room, who she had to make nice with because she was the face of the office, and that gives her fuel for another five minutes of shouting. “Fuck you Mr. Rusnak and fuck you Ms. Berg, and fuck you Mrs. Morrison and your shitty little brats – “

They wind down eventually. Ben comes back in to pour them both glasses of water and insist that they drink them (“You’ll thank me in the morning, I promise”) and he tries to escort them upstairs, but Emily waves him off and makes her way up to her room herself. She’s barely even tipsy at this point, honestly; all her high spirits are organic, stemming from adrenaline and awe. Awe at herself, mostly. She can’t believe she’s actually doing this, that she actually _did_ any of this.

It’s not until she opens the door to her room that she remembers the broken bathroom window and the blood on the bed, left over from when Bev stitched her cheek up. She could technically still sleep here – she could strip the bed and lock the bathroom door to make sure no one can get to her room through there – but she’s tired, and she doesn’t really feel like it. She’s riding high on their triumph at Neibolt, but that doesn’t mean she wants to sleep in the room where she got stabbed a few hours ago. Call her crazy.

She undresses and sets her borrowed clothes on top of the dresser, changing into her pajamas and slippers before padding across the hallway. Bill’s door is closed with a “do not disturb” sign, and she wouldn’t ask to bunk down with him anyway. She can hear Ben and Bev’s voices from behind Ben’s door, and she could probably knock there and ask to take Bev’s newly empty room, but that feels presumptuous.

Besides, Rachel owes her a favour.

Rachel calls, “come in,” when Emily knocks. When she opens the door and lets herself in, she sees Rachel sitting up in bed, a book balanced on her knees, spine-up. She’s wearing an uncracked pair of glasses, which she pushes up her nose when she sees Emily. “I didn’t order room service.”

“Oh, shut up.” Emily walks across the room and dropped into bed beside Rachel. “My room’s a crime scene, I need somewhere to sleep.”

“This entire town is a crime scene,” Rachel says, “but I take your point.” She smiles crookedly. “Was I your first choice?”

“Absolutely not,” Emily says. Rachel’s smile drops off her face for a millisecond, and she feels a stab of guilt. She still goes on: “Ben and Bev are shacking up, Mike doesn’t sleep here, and I bet Bill snores. I figured your room would be a mess, but you also owe me. So.”

Rachel puts on a mock-affronted look. It looks fake, painted on: spackled over something else. “I haven’t even had time to make a mess in here, we only got into town yesterday!”

Emily points to a pile of discarded clothes on the floor beside the bathroom door. “Check and mate.”

“A few clothes on the floor only counts as a mess by neurotic clean freak standards,” Rachel says. She pulls her knees up, the book sliding down to rest face-up on the covers. “And they don’t have maid service here. When was I supposed to clean up between killing Henry Bowers with a tomahawk and bullying a clown to death?”

“Touché” Emily says grudgingly. She looks down at the book sitting on the duvet; Bill’s name stands out in block letters. “You read Bill’s books? Seriously?”

“I’ve read a couple of them.” Rachel nudges the book with her foot, sending it sliding to the floor. “Kind of liked them, too. Don’t tell Bill, he doesn’t need the ego boost.” She glances at Emily. “Hey, was that you yelling downstairs? What was that all about?”

Emily pulls the duvet up and squirms underneath it. Rachel has the AC on full blast, and it goes right through her pajamas. “Bev and I were celebrating.”

“And I wasn’t invited?” Rachel clutches her chest, flinging her head back. “I can’t believe you two.”

Emily shakes her head. “Only fresh divorcées invited to the divorce celebration party.” As she says it, she wonders if she’s overstepping; Bev might not want to spread it around. On the other hand, she’s already taken her ring off and pointedly avoided mentioning her husband at the dinner table last night. It’s ambiguous, she decides. Could go either way.

“Whoa.” Rachel blinks at her. “Uh. Congratulations?”

“Yeah, well.” Emily looks down at her nails. Her manicure – a pale seashell pink, one of the few shades considered appropriate in the office – is starting to chip. She thinks she might paint her nails something crazy after this. Green, maybe. “Near-death experiences will do that to you. Puts things in perspective.”

Rachel snorts. “Not me. I’m going to keep on being exactly as unhealthy and repressed as I always was.” She shakes her head vigorously. “You can take the girl out of the small-town trauma, but you can’t take the small-town trauma out of the girl. Mike’s ritual wasn’t that good.”

“Mike’s ritual wasn’t good at _all_ ,” Emily says, “but I guess it did the trick.” She thinks again of her inhaler, buried where no one will ever stumble across it. Maybe a thousand years from now, some archaeologist will dig it up and marvel at the remnant of a lost civilization. They won’t ever find Ben’s poem, or Bev’s postcard, or Bill’s boat; the fire took care of that. And Mike’s rock would blend in with the rest of the rubble. Rachel had been right, though - her inhaler wouldn’t burn. At least it was away from her. “Hey, what was that about, anyway? You tossed a video game token in there.”

“Yes,” Rachel says. “I did.” She leans over the edge of the bed and grabs the book, settling back against the pillows. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I was just getting to a good part – “

“Oh, don’t give me that shit.” Emily snatches the book from her hands, over Rachel’s protests. “I told you about getting divorced, now you owe me a confession. Fair’s fair.”

“It is not! I never agreed to this!”

“And you already know why I threw my inhaler in,” Emily points out. “Come on. Spill.”

Rachel’s quiet for a long while; long enough that Emily starts to squirm. “Hey,” she says, “If you really don’t want to – “

“No.” Rachel sighs, rubbing her hands over her face. “No, it’s fine. That’s what this whole trip was about, right? Excavating all our childhood bullshit. Just – give me a second.”

Emily waits.

“I’m gay,” Rachel says abruptly. “Sorry, I should probably have lead with that, like, last night.” She slides her legs over the side of the bed. “I can sleep in your room tonight, if you want. I don’t care about sleeping in a crime scene.”

“What? No.” Emily grabs her sleeve. “You can – it doesn’t matter. I mean, I don’t care.”

Rachel gives her a long look, but she pulls her legs back up into bed. “I didn’t – “ She takes a deep breath. “I didn’t go to your room to put a move on you, or anything. I really just needed toothpaste.”

“Rachel, I _know_.” Something in the back of Emily’s brain is prickling – a memory – but she can’t shake it loose. “I didn’t think you were trying anything.”

“Right, right, sorry.” She shakes her head. “It’s just – the token. Being back here. It brought a lot of shit up.” She gives Emily a long, penetrating look. Emily stares back, baffled. What does Rachel think she’s going to do?

“Anyway,” she says. “The token. It was that summer, while you were basically under house arrest. I kind of wasn’t – the rest of us had this massive fight, so we weren’t really hanging out together. I spent all my time at the arcade. And Bowers’ cousin was in town that month. Cathy. You never met her, but – “ She huffs out a soft little laugh. “She was cute. Blonde. Little snub nose.”

Emily tries to picture her, and can’t. She feels queasy, wonders if it’s the memory block. Shouldn’t the block be gone by now? Pennywise is dead, after all. Maybe it’s something else.

“We played video games,” Rachel says. “Street Fighter, mostly. She was _good_ at it. I never met any girls who were into video games, besides you. And you weren’t around, so. We hung out. I should have known it was stupid, because I knew who her cousin was, but I didn’t even think of it. And this one time, we – “ She swallows hard. “She had to leave, she said. And I asked her to stay a bit longer, and I – I think I touched her hand. I didn’t, like, grab it. I just touched it. And her face – “

Rachel’s mouth twists. Emily wonders for a second if she’s going to throw up. She swallows hard, then goes on. “She looked at me, and she said – she yelled, basically – ‘what are you, some kind of _lesbian_?’ And I don’t know if Bowers was, like, lurking nearby or he just happened to hear her, but he came in. And he said – yelled – “ She scrubs the hand of her hand across her eyes. “He said, ‘what, you didn’t know she’s a total carpet-muncher?’”

Emily stares at her, horror-struck. “Rachel . . .”

“And then he turns to one of his friends,” she continues, like she’s gotten this far into the story and has to keep pushing through until it’s over, “I don’t remember which one, maybe it was Belch – and he says, ‘it’s too bad she’s too ugly to fuck, because she really needs a good dick in her – “

“ _Rachel!_ ”

“And I just.” Rachel makes a choking sound, like she’s fighting her way up from under water. “I ran away. Everyone was staring, and Cathy still had that look on her face, and I – I swear to God Emily, I was never as scared of the clown as I was right then.”

“Fuck,” Emily says with feeling. “Fuck, Rachel, I – I’m so sorry. I should have been there.”

Rachel swipes her hand across her eyes again. “It wasn’t your fault. Your mom had you locked up. It was my dumbass fault for hanging out with Cathy like that. You know, I – “ She swallows. “I did like her. I wasn’t trying to – to do anything, but I liked her, and I thought maybe she – “ She cuts herself off, shaking her head. “It was dumb.”

“It wasn’t,” Emily says. She’s thinking of Rachel as she was back then: scrawny, loudmouthed, swaggering around trying to look like she was ten feet taller than she was. No wonder she’d had such a front up all the time. No wonder she’d headed off anything resembling sincerity with bad jokes. “You could have told us then. We would have stuck up for you.”

“Bev knew,” Rachel says. “I mean, she figured it out. I don’t know if anybody else did.” She gives Emily another penetrating look. “I think you might have. You don’t remember?”

Emily starts to shake her head, then stops. Something is swimming up from the depths of her memory – not submerged under Derry magic, but buried beneath all the debris she piled on top of it so she wouldn’t have to think about it again. Waiting where she’d left it, on hold until she could bear to dig it back up. She’d never tried. She’d just left it there, gathering dust, in the same place where she stored all her other messy feelings and memories that weren’t convenient to handle.

The clubhouse. Skies overcast, the threat of rain in the air. Rachel’s mouth on hers, tears drying on her cheeks.

“Fucking – “ She scrambles backwards. The bed is suddenly claustrophobic; she can’t trust herself inside it. “Jesus. Fucking shit!”

Rachel’s not smiling, but she is laughing. “Now there’s the reaction I was expecting.”

“You – “ The memory crystalizes: Rachel’s face as she backed away, seconds from shattering. _She’d_ done that. “I didn’t – you never said! How could you not _say_ anything?”

“I never said?” Rachel repeats, incredulous. Her laughter dries up quickly. “When was I _supposed_ to say? ‘Hey, I know we’re all busy, but if you could pencil something in, I think we should sit down and talk about the time we sucked face in tenth grade.’”

“Don’t – don’t call it that, that’s disgusting.” Emily clutches her temples. She feels the way she did in the clubhouse that afternoon, knocked off-balance and without solid ground to fight her way back to. “You remembered! This whole time, you remembered? And you didn’t – “

“I thought _you_ remembered!” Rachel retorts. “How was I supposed to know whether you did or not? I can’t read minds, Emily! If you didn’t say anything either, how the hell was I supposed to know?”

“I couldn’t say anything about something I _didn’t know happened_!” Her voice is shrill. She thinks Ben and Bev might be able to hear her from across the hall, and hopes they don’t come to investigate. “When did _you_ know? At the restaurant? How come you could remember and I couldn’t?”

“Fuck if I know!” Rachel throws her hands up. “If you want someone to explain how this collective amnesia thing works, you should be talking to Mike, not me. I just know I walked into the restaurant and I saw you and it all just – it came back, and I – “

Emily stares at her. “You knew,” she says, “because - ?”

Rachel slides off the bed and starts to back towards the door. “This isn’t – I can’t talk about this right now. I’m gonna go. This isn’t – “

“No!” Emily practically vaults across the bed, grabbing Rachel’s wrist. Rachel freezes, staring down at her hand. “You can’t just – just drop a bomb like that and leave. We have to talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Rachel half-shrugs. “We were teenagers. It was stupid. I kissed you and you weren’t up for it, and then you moved away and grew up and got married because you’re straight. And I’m not. And that’s – it is what it is, okay? I’m not the first stupid dyke to get a crush on her straight friend. It’s a fucking cliché for a reason.”

Emily licks her lips. “It isn’t, though,” she says. “I told you, it’s not – I’m getting divorced.”

The word lands between them like a meteor crashing into the earth. Emily doesn’t let go of Rachel’s wrist. Rachel doesn’t stop staring at her. Her eyes are wide and watery, on the verge of spilling over.

“You’re getting divorced,” Rachel says carefully. Emily nods. “Because of, um – why are you getting divorced? It can’t be – you just remembered this. It can’t be that.”

“It’s not,” Emily says. “It’s because he had his friend put me on lithium when I got upset, and he took all my wages for years, and he tried to call the cops on me when I told him I was going to Maine.”

Rachel blinks. “Okay. Wow. Those are good reasons.” She takes a shuddery breath. “But – you married him. I mean, you must have wanted – “

“I didn’t,” Emily says. “I never – “ She drops Rachel’s wrist, puts her head in her hands. Her thoughts are chasing each other around and around in circles, and she can’t separate the heads from the tails. “I met him in my last year of college,” she says, “in the hospital. My mom was dying. He was an intern in the oncology department. I was alone, and I didn’t know what to do, and he was just – he had an answer for everything. And I guess . . . it felt normal. Having someone tell me what to do. It felt safe. You don’t know, you can’t – if you’ve never been able to breathe, it feels natural to have someone smother you.”

“So, you married this guy,” Rachel says. “Because he reminded you – “

“Of my mother.” Emily raises her head and glares at Rachel. “You don’t need to say it. I know what it sounds like.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Rachel says, and because the circumstances are what they are, Emily refrains from replying, _yeah right_. “But then you – I mean, you must have been married for, like, fifteen years. I’m not trying to – “ The tips of her ears turn red. “I mean, you were married, you must have – “

“I had sex with him, if that’s what you’re asking,” Emily snaps. “So what?”

“So you didn’t even _like_ him, but you had _sex_ with him?” Rachel says. “For _fifteen years_?”

“It’s not like my mom kept a copy of _The Joy of Sex_ lying around when I was growing up!” Emily throws her hands up. “I didn’t like it, but I didn’t think I was _supposed_ to. I thought that was just how people felt.”

“Jesus Christ.” Rachel sits down on the bed with a thump. “That’s the saddest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Emily says reflexively. “What’s _your_ sex life like?”

“That’s not the point,” Rachel shoots back at her. “I may have been stuck in the back of the closet, but at least I knew I was in there. You didn’t – “ She pauses. “Wait, are you? Do you even know?”

Emily groans, sinking down onto the bed beside her and scrubbing her hands over her face. “How am I supposed to know?”

“I knew,” Rachel says. Emily thinks she sounds more smug than the situation really calls for.

“We can’t all be prodigies,” Emily snaps. “Some of us grew up incredibly repressed and just got out of a shitty marriage, Rachel! There’s a learning curve!”

“Fine.” Rachel looks – well, she looks a lot of things. Incredulous, but also faintly amused, and maybe a little sad. “I’ll get you a copy of _The Whole Lesbian Sex Book_ and show you how to set up a Tinder account. You were always an overachiever, you’ll figure it out in no time.” She pauses. “Have you ever – I mean, besides him, have you even kissed anybody?”

Emily shrugs wearily. “Just the once.”

“Ah. Right. That.” Rachel sighs, blowing a piece of hair out of her face. “So if you – I mean, I don’t know how much you really remember, but – “ She flushes a dull red. “Did you like it? I mean, you seemed pretty ambivalent. At the time. Like, ‘running away and never speaking of it again’ ambivalent.”

“I had a lot of shit going on,” Emily says. She casts her mind back to that afternoon in the clubhouse, trying to remember how she’d felt at fifteen. She’d run away, because of course she had; Rachel’s pep talk aside, she’d never been brave enough to go after what she wanted. _Had_ she wanted it? She frowns, trying to concentrate.

“It was pretty soggy,” she says. “I remember that.” Rachel opens her mouth, and Emily holds a finger up. “Do not say it. I’m warning you.”

“I wasn’t _going_ to,” Rachel huffs. “I was going to say, of course it was soggy. You were crying at the time.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” Again, she tries to remember. “And I told you I couldn’t. And I ran away.”

“Yep,” Rachel says. “I remember that. Left a big impression.”

“Because I was moving,” Emily says slowly. More and more is trickling back. “We were never going to see each other again. I remember thinking – this was the last time. And I couldn’t deal.”

Rachel’s quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “Was that why?”

“I don’t know.” She’s straining, not to remember, but to access how she’d felt; to excavate herself from the layers of bullshit she’s accumulated over the years. To kick her way through the brick and drywall that’s kept her trapped in a tiny room of her own making, so that she can re-connect the circuits she’s disabled in her own brain. How did she feel? How _does_ she feel?

“We used to have sleepovers,” she says slowly. “We both slept in your bed. And I would cuddle up next to you. I never liked hugs, but it was okay with you. But I could only do it when I was half-asleep, so I could pretend it wasn’t – that it didn’t mean anything.”

“Wait a minute, you did that shit on purpose?” Rachel’s mouth drops open. “You drove me crazy doing that, you little shit! I thought you were about to wake up and freak out on me!”

“I thought _you_ were going to freak out on _me_!” Emily fires back. “Or at least push me off or complain I was hogging the bed, like you always did with the hammock!”

“I climbed in there on purpose, you dumbass!” Rachel starts laughing. She’s smiling this time. “Because I wanted to get your attention! I liked it when you yelled at me, like we were in some weird teenaged S&M situation.”

“First of all, never say that again,” Emily says. “Second of all, I was the one who would sit next to you at the movies and grab your hand when it got scary – “

“You did that on purpose too?” Rachel starts to shake her head. “You diabolical little fucker.”

“No,” Emily says, “not on purpose. At least, not – I didn’t admit it to myself. I just wanted to be around you all the time. I didn’t get why. And I didn’t know how else to ask.”

“Well, I’m glad we’re all caught up,” Rachel says. “And it only took twenty-five years. Look at us.”

“Look at us,” Emily echoes. She shifts in her seat. “So. What now?”

Rachel shrugs. It seems to Emily that she’s avoiding meeting her eyes. “I actually could set you up on Tinder, you know. As long as you only do pictures from the neck down, nobody has to know it’s you – “

“I don’t want to be on Tinder, dumbass,” Emily says, exasperated. Rachel sounds like she’s speaking from experience, and Emily wonders what she’s done in the intervening twenty-five years; about the other women she may have fucked, the pictures she posted on hookup apps, the things she’s done and had done to her in private, with the door locked and the blinds lowered. She pictures a selfie, taken in a bathroom mirror – smudgy and pixelated, but clear enough to command the viewer’s attention. If she had ever been brave enough to go on one of those apps and she’d clicked on Rachel’s profile, what would she have done? Would she have known?

Slowly – deliberately – with what feels like more willpower and bravery than anything else she’s ever done – she lifts her hand and sets it down on her thigh, just above her knee. Rachel goes still, like she’s trying to avoid attention by staying in place.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “Okay.” She puts her hand on top of Emily’s, relaxing fractionally. “Emily, look. I’m really glad you’re figuring this shit out. And you know I – “ She blinks once, twice. Emily is mesmerized by the sweep of her eyelashes. “Well, you remember everything now. You know where I stand. But I can’t – you gotta be sure.”

“Sure?” Emily repeats. “About what?”

“About – “ Rachel gestures with her free hand. “I can’t do this halfway, okay? I just can’t. I can’t handle that. So if you’re doing this because it’s easier or safer or whatever, then just – just tell me now, okay? Because I’m not – “

“What,” Emily says, “the _fuck_. Are you actually serious right now? You think I want you because it’s easy? None of this has been fucking _easy_ , Rachel! I’m not punking out now, after all this bullshit!”

“Look,” Rachel says, still blinking rapidly. “I haven’t exactly had a great couple of decades either, okay? So fucking _forgive me_ if I’m a little nervous right now! It’s not like I have a history of pulling this off well!”

“Fuck history,” Emily says, with conviction. “It’s over. We buried all that shit. It’s done. Look, can you just – “

Rachel kisses her. It’s hard and a little clumsy, but (Emily thinks) not as soggy as last time. She realizes then that she doesn’t know how to kiss back properly, or what she’s supposed to do with her hands, or basically anything about kissing a person she actually wants to kiss, so she just sort of flails weakly until Rachel starts laughing and grabs her wrists. “No, here,” she says, “you gotta – “ And she puts and arm around Emily’s waist and pulls her into her lap.

The urge to flail is still there, mostly because so much is happening all at once, and her system can’t seem to handle it – every nerve is firing simultaneously, and she doesn’t know whether to sink her hands in Rachel’s hair, or try to wrestle her shirt off, or try to get her _own_ shirt off. She’s burning to the roots of her hair and shocked by the overwhelming desire to rock down against Rachel’s lap, to rub against her like a cat even through two layers of clothes. Rachel’s tongue is in her mouth, and she always thought that was disgusting before, but now she sucks on it with abandon, groaning as she clutches at Rachel’s shoulders, fighting for equilibrium.

“Okay,” Rachel says, leaning back. Emily whines, trying to chase her mouth, but Rachel puts a hand up between them. “Okay. I am thrilled by all this, but it’s like eleven o’clock at night and we’ve both been up for over twelve hours. Also, you got stabbed today, and I killed a guy, and we both killed a clown. Maybe we should sleep on this?”

Emily sits back, disappointment washing over her. “So, you don’t want – “

“Oh, I want a _lot_.” Rachel rubs her thumb along the seam of Emily’s mouth. “But I’d also like to be awake and alert enough to enjoy it properly, which – to be honest – I’m not right now.” She loops her arm around Emily’s lower back. “So if we could just draw a line under this for the night, and we can pick it up in the morning?”

“Uhhhh.” Rachel’s thumb on her mouth is making it hard to focus. “But we are gonna pick it up?”

“Yeah.” Rachel noses at the hollow of Emily’s throat, kissing the join of her shoulder. “We’re gonna pick it up, I just – mmm – we gotta stop now, it’s too tempting.”

“Fine.” Emily wiggles in place, just for the sake of making Rachel groan. “Fine. Your move.”

She regrets it almost as soon as it’s out of her mouth, because Rachel gets a horribly familiar look in her eye right before saying, “if you insist,” and executing some kind of combined roll/flip maneuver that ends with Emily landing hard on the other side of the bed, breath knocked out of her lungs. “Ooof!”

“You asked!” Rachel says, looking pleased with herself as she crawls back under the covers. “Your wish is my command.”

Emily glares at her. “What if I wish you would sleep on the floor?”

“Mmm, no can do.” Rachel stretches, yawning widely. “But I can do you one better. C’mere.”

Emily shifts over in bed until she’s snuggled in next to Rachel, who puts both arms around her. For once, Emily realizes, she’s being held and she actually _likes_ it. The feeling is so foreign, it takes her a second or two to adjust.

“There you go,” Rachel says quietly, stroking a hand up and down Emily’s back under her pajama top. She kisses her again, chastely this time. The intensity of a few minutes ago has subsided, and while she still feels warm, it’s not the frantic heat she was feeling before. Instead, it’s comfortable. When was the last time she really felt comfortable?

Rachel flings an arm out, hitting vaguely in the direction of the bedside lamp. She actually manages to hit the switch, and the room goes dark. Rachel’s hand on her back keeps Emily anchored in place; her thumb keeps stroking just below the band of her bra.

“Go’sleep,” Rachel says with another yawn. “Make out in the morning.”

Emily puts her head under Rachel’s chin. She can feel her eyelids getting heavy. “Promise?” She’s going for sultry, but it comes out sleepy.

Rachel’s breath ghosts across the top of Emily’s head, rustling her hair. “Promise.”

* * *

She half-wakes early the next morning, to the sound of Rachel moving around the room. Rachel must hear her stirring, because she comes and bends over the bed. “I gotta go for a couple hours,” she says. Her hair brushes Emily’s cheek. “Be back soon.”

Emily mumbles something incoherent that sounds vaguely like “uh-huh.” She hears Rachel cross the room, and the sound of the door opening and closing. The key snicks in the lock as she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

When she wakes for the second time, the sun is pressing against the blinds in a way that signals it’s at least mid-morning. She raises her head from the pillow, blinking blearily. Rachel’s side of the bed is empty, and her clothes are tossed haphazardly across the floor. No surprise there. Emily vaguely remembers Rachel saying something about leaving, but she was barely half-awake at the time, and she has no idea where Rachel actually went. Maybe she’s downstairs.

After showering and retrieving her remaining clean clothes from her bedroom, she descends to the lounge. Bev’s curled up in one of the armchairs, nursing a cup of coffee and a queasy expression. She manages a feeble smile when she sees Emily. “Please tell me you’re as hungover as I am.”

“Actually, no.” Emily sits down in the chair next to Bev. There’s a plate of muffins on the coffee table, and she grabs one, pulling the wrapper free and nibbling on the edge. “But I didn’t drink as much.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” Bev rests her head on one hand, eyes drooping half-closed. “Ben was right, though. I’m glad I had that glass of water, or I’d feel even worse.” She tosses back the rest of her coffee. “I have a bunch of legal shit to sort out, but I’m really not in the mood for it. I guess you do too?”

“Oh.” Emily had thought of it briefly the night before, before her conversation with Rachel had commandeered her attention. “I’m not sure, actually. I mean, I know I have to get a lawyer, but I don’t know how I can hire one. I haven’t got any money.”

Bev squints at her. “I assume you mean that literally, and not in the ‘I don’t have any cash on me right now’ sense?”

Emily nods.

“Figures.” Bev stirs herself enough to reach over and pour herself more coffee. “Doesn’t that just suck shit? You want to divorce your husband because he took all your money, but you can’t, because he has all the money you need to pay the divorce lawyer.” She takes another sip. “I’m sure Tom’s closed the joint account by now, but I’ve still got my own card. I guess I’m the lucky one.” She looks at Emily. “If you need a loan . . .”

Emily’s about to refuse, but stops herself. She doesn’t want to lean too hard on her friends’ charity, but she also knows she’s perilously low on options at the moment. “Thanks for the offer,” she says instead. “I’ll let you know how it shakes out.” She swallows the last bite of her muffin; blueberry, like the one Rachel brought her yesterday morning. Speaking of. “Hey, do you know where Rachel is?”

“She went down to the police station with Mike and Ben,” Bev says. She sets her mug down on the table. “She and Mike had to give a statement about Henry Bowers, and Ben went along in case they need a witness. And Bill’s still asleep, I think. Oh!” She brightens. “Mike got a call from Stan. He’s still in the hospital, but he’s awake and talking now. He says they didn’t talk long, but he’s going to call back in a few days.”

“That’s good,” Emily says, though a knot forms between her shoulder blades when Bev mentions Bowers. “Did Mike say how long they’d be at the station?”

“He didn’t know, but – “ Bev shrugs. “Probably not that long. The cops probably want the whole ‘escaped lunatic’ issue dealt with as quickly and quietly as possible.”

“I hope so,” Emily says fervently. Maybe a little too fervently; Bev gives her a searching look, and leans over to pat her knee. “It’ll be fine. I can’t believe we went through all this bullshit just to get arrested over Henry Bowers.”

That does make Emily feel a little better; they’ve managed to get this far without any fatalities, and a setback now seems like something that could only happen in an especially cruel Greek tragedy. She sits back in the chair, tucking her feet up underneath her. “I owe you for your clothes, by the way. I can send them for dry cleaning, but I don’t think that amount of clown gunk comes out in the wash.”

“Ugh.” Bev waves a dismissive hand. “Just burn them. It’s what I’m doing with my clothes. Even if the stains came out, I’d still feel dirty wearing them.”

“But – “ Emily realizes how dumb the sentence is as she’s saying it, but she’s already too far in to back out. “But they’re Lululemon!”

Bev laughs, reaching over to ruffle Emily’s hair. “I have lots of Lululemon. More than I need, actually. I could loan you some, if you want.”

“I don’t know,” Emily says. “I’m not sure I could live up to that kind of standard. I don’t even go to the gym.”

Bev hums. “You could start.”

“I guess I could.” Emily looks down at her coffee cup. She and Rachel hadn’t made it to the clothing removal stage last night; Rachel hasn’t seen her with any less than three-quarters of her body wrapped in shapeless cotton garments. What will she think, once she finally gets Emily (it makes her flush just to think the word) naked? Once she gets a good look at the soft flesh around her hips and thighs, where she can no longer fit into the size 6 jeans she wore in college? She doesn’t know who Rachel’s been sleeping with for the past twenty-five years, but whoever they are, they’re probably in better shape than her.

“I want to get new clothes anyway,” she says aloud. “I think I kind of hate my wardrobe.”

“Well, let me know when you decide to pull the trigger,” Bev says. “I might be able to help with that. Oh, or you could let me cut up your old clothes. I haven’t done alterations in ages, and I miss it.”

“I don’t think alterations will be able to save anything in my wardrobe,” Emily says, “but thanks.”

They chat for awhile after that. Nothing like the night before – inconsequential things, like what Bev wants to design next (“something casual,” she says, “but business casual, so you could still wear it to the office”) and the benefits of living in NYC versus out in the suburbs, and how they spent their college years. Emily still feels a tinge of shame whenever she mentions her life as it stands now; they’ve all been stuck in stasis to some degree, but at least Bev and the others did _something_ with their lives. What does she have to show for her life? A “WORLD’S BEST RECEPTIONIST” mug?

“Yeah, well, you’re changing that now,” Bev says when Emily mentions this. “No point looking backwards instead of forwards.” And maybe it’s the coffee, or the company, or the conversation with Rachel from last night, but that actually makes Emily feel better.

Rachel, Ben, and Mike arrive back at the Townhouse around noon, looking tired but triumphant. By then, Bill’s wandered downstairs and helped himself to the remaining muffins, offering occasional interjections in Bev and Emily’s conversation. All three of them shoot to their feet when the others walk in; Bev says, “what happened?” at the same time Emily blurts out, “are you okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Mike says. Ben goes to hug Bev, and Rachel makes a move like she wants to do the same to Emily before freezing, giving Emily a look that says, _is this okay?_ Emily gives a tiny nod, and Rachel scoops her up, pressing a smacking kiss to her cheek. Emily groans loudly and pushes her, but she’s smiling.

“I’m really glad I’m not going to jail,” Rachel says once she puts Emily down. “I don’t trust a single one of you to bake a shiv into a cake, except maybe Bev.”

“I think I’d be better at making a shiv than a cake,” Bev says. Her chin is resting on Ben’s shoulder, face relaxed into a smile. “I’m a horrible baker.”

“You don’t _eat_ the cake, you just pull it apart to get at the shiv,” Rachel says. “God, it’s like none of you even watched _Prison Break_.”

“I did, actually,” Mike says. “There’s a lot of downtime at the reference desk.”

“I’m glad Derry’s tax dollars are being well-spent,” Rachel says, then turns to Emily. “Hey, so about that thing we were going to deal with? Upstairs?”

“What thing?” Ben says. Emily stares at Rachel, hoping to communicate _good going, dumbass_ with her eyes. She can feel Bev looking at her, and is afraid to look back in case Bev’s got that familiar knowing expression on her face.

“Just some stuff with my luggage,” Emily says. “It might, ah, take a while, though. Do you guys have any plans for the rest of the day?”

“Oh, we’ll be around,” Bev says quickly. “You guys take all the time you need.”

“But what – “ Ben starts to say, then cuts himself off with a slight squeak; out of the corner of her eye, Emily catches Bev pinch him. “I mean, yeah. Actually, Bev, wasn’t there something you wanted to – “

“I hope you all have a very productive afternoon,” Rachel says, and makes for the stairs almost immediately, dragging Emily along behind her. Emily does not look back. She thinks she might, very literally, turn into a pillar of salt.

“Was that _really_ the smoothest you could manage?” she hisses at Rachel once they’re halfway up the stairs and safely out of earshot. “We’re _dealing with a thing_? Why didn’t you just say, ‘we’re going upstairs to f – ‘ mmph!”

As soon as Rachel pulls them through the door to her room and kicks it shut behind them, she’s got Emily pressed to the wall, kissing her with more fervour than technique. Emily, who has no technique herself, doesn’t really mind. She lets Rachel dig her hands into her hair while they kiss, messy and wet as she runs her tongue across the seam of Emily’s mouth. Emily grabs onto Rachel’s waist and hauls her in close, burning everywhere she’s touching bare skin. Rachel jams one of her knees in between Emily’s legs and pushes up, and Emily lets out an undignified yelp at the rush of heat where she grinds down through layers of cotton and denim. It feels so _fucking good_ , it’s all she can do to squeeze her thighs around Rachel’s leg and hump frantically over and over, trying to repeat the sensation every time before it evaporates. She digs her hands hard into Rachel’s waist, hanging on for dear life while Rachel sucks on her neck and she keeps on riding, riding –

Rachel pulls back. “That it?”

“Uhh?” Emily’s brain is too fogged to think straight. Rachel pulls back a little further, removing her leg. Emily whines. “I said, is that it? Because we can absolutely fuck against the wall, I’m not complaining, but I thought you’d prefer the bed.”

“That, um – “ God dammit, she still can’t get a clear head. “That was fucking?”

“No. Which is my point.” Rachel licks at the hollow of Emily’s throat. “I’m not going to call myself an expert lover, but I do think I can manage a little better than this. So. Bed?”

“Oh.” The throbbing between her legs has subsided, but barely. She can at least think straight, or straight enough to answer Rachel’s question. “Yeah. Bed.”

She stumbles a little as she makes her way over, legs wobbly, but that’s over soon enough. She lands on the edge of the bed, looking up at Rachel, who’s still standing. With an evil grin, Rachel grabs the hem of her t-shirt and yanks it over her head, tossing it off to the side. It lands somewhere by the bathroom door; Emily doesn’t see where. She’s too busy staring at Rachel. Rachel, who is not wearing a bra.

“ _Ohhh_.”

“Yep.” Rachel looks a little bit too pleased with herself as she unbuttons her jeans and kicks them off, and really, that’s not _fair_ – not when she’s standing there in nothing but her underwear, flushed all the way down her chest and rippling with every breath. Emily is half a second away from actually drooling.

“Hey, Emily?” Rachel comes to stand at the edge of the bed, brushing against Emily’s knees. “This would work better if we were both naked.” When Emily hesitates, she adds, “you don’t have to, but I – “

“No,” Emily says, “no, it’s fine. I can – here.” Her own shirt has approximately a dozen tiny buttons that need to be undone, and her hands are shaking, which makes it that much harder. When she finally manages to get it open, shrug it off, and set it aside, she unbuttons her skirt and yanks that off, too. Unlike Rachel, she is wearing a bra, and she feels a sudden wave of self-consciousness about it – it’s nothing fancy, just plain beige. And it doesn’t even match her underwear.

From the look on Rachel’s face, she doesn’t seem to mind. “Wow,” she says. “ _Wow_. Okay. Can you sit against the headboard, there?”

Emily scrambles backwards until her back is braced against the headboard. Rachel crawls up the bed towards her, bracketing her with an arm on either side. She kisses Emily again, open-mouthed from the start this time, and Emily writhes underneath her. She can feel Rachel’s breasts pressed against hers, nipples hard and peaked, and she reaches up to pinch one of them almost on instinct. Rachel makes a sound in her mouth that’s half-gasp, half-squeak, then laughs. “Nice one.” She slides one of her own hands around to the clasp on Emily’s bra. “Can I take this off?”

“Mmph. Yeah.” Emily fumbles around to where Rachel is trying and failing to undo the clasp and finishes the job for her. The first touch of Rachel’s hand on her bare breast sends an electric shock through her whole body, and she arches up under her touch. “Ah, ah – “

“Gotcha.” She can feel Rachel grinning against her mouth, just before she slides down to suck a kiss into her shoulder. She bites down, then licks over skin that’s still pink and tender, and then the ducks down even further. Emily wonders for half a second what she’s about to do, and then Rachel closes her mouth around one of Emily’s nipples and _sucks_.

Emily slams her hand down onto the bed, using the other to muffle her yell. Rachel flicks her nipple with her tongue once, twice, then pulls her mouth away. Emily’s nipple, still wet, is chilled at the sudden lack. “Cut that out,” she says. “I wanna hear you.”

“I don’t want anyone else to hear me!” Emily hisses.

“Did you hear anyone else last night?” Rachel grins up at her. “They’re all downstairs, it’s fine.”

Emily can still feel anxiety crawling up her spine, the certainty that someone is going to hear her and they’ll know, and then there’s going to be real trouble – the particular type of trouble she’s expecting is a murky uncertainty, but the idea of someone _knowing_ what she’s doing, _knowing_ that she’s gone this far off-script is squeezing around her heart like an iron band. Rachel goes back to kissing her breast, leaving another red mark on the underside, then shimmies further down. She grasps Emily’s hips with both hands, nosing across the waistband of her underwear, then hooks her fingers under the elastic and starts to pull it down. Emily can feel Rachel’s breath ghosting across her skin, and something in her stomach tightens.

Rachel kisses the crease of her thigh where it meets her leg. Emily’s toes curl. She feels damp between her legs, and hot. She can’t tell if the sensation’s good or bad; it feels like running a fever. The knot in her stomach squeezes, like a fist around her guts.

“Rachel.” She squirms. “Rachel, stop.”

Rachel pulls back, sitting on her heels and scrubbing the back of her hand against her mouth. “What’s the matter?” Emily’s afraid to look her in the eye. “Emily? Are you okay?”

“I’m – “ The air in the room feels hot and close, pressing down over her mouth and nose like a wet washcloth. “I can’t – oh shit, Rachel. I’m sorry.”

“Hey. _Hey_.” Rachel crawls back up the bed, propping herself up on the pillow next to Emily. “You don’t have to be sorry. Look at me.” She puts a hand on the side of Emily’s face. “Come on, look at me. You gotta breathe with me, remember? We’ve done this before.”

She still can’t bear to open her eyes and look at Rachel, but she can breathe with her, at least. She closes her hand around Rachel’s wrist and follows the beat of her pulse. In and out. She remembers this. Slowly, the knot in her stomach eases, and her breath comes more slowly.

She throws her hand over her eyes. “ _Fuck_.”

“It’s okay.” She cracks one eye open to see Rachel biting her lip. “Is it – can I touch you?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles. She’s not sure she’s ever been this humiliated in her life before. Getting her period and bleeding all over her skirt in eighth grade came close, but she’s pretty sure this has that beat. “Just don’t – don’t start anything.”

Rachel’s hand settles on her breastbone, thumb rubbing gently back and forth. She doesn’t say anything, and Emily realizes she’s waiting for her.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I just – I thought I could, and I couldn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Rachel says for what’s probably the fifth time. Then: “Do you know why?”

“I’m not . . .” Emily scrubs her hand over her eyes. “I didn’t – I don’t know how to feel good. I never have.”

Rachel says, gently, “Look at me.”

Emily takes her hand away from her eyes and turns her head on the pillow so she’s facing Rachel. Her tone might be gentle, but that only makes Emily all the more afraid of what she might see. Max was gentle with her while he said she needed managing. Her mother was gentle with her while she said she needed protection. Gentleness, in her experience, does not come without caveats.

But when she meets Rachel’s eyes, she doesn’t see any kind of intent there. She doesn’t see disappointment, or calculation. Rachel just looks earnest. She looks like she’s waiting for Emily to say something, not so she can come up with a counter-argument to shut her down or convince her that she’s helpless, but because she wants to hear what Emily has to say. It’s destabilizing.

Rachel’s thumb is still rubbing back and forth on her collarbone. “So,” she says. “You never – did it with anyone besides your husband?”

Despite the circumstances, Emily feels a giggle bubble up in her chest at Rachel saying _did it_ like they’re still in middle school. “Just once,” she says. “There was a guy in college. I wanted to get it over with.” She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “It didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel good with Max, either. I thought that was just how it felt for everyone.”

Sex was not something she did. Sex was something she submitted to to make someone else happy. It was part of life, but a lot of mediocre experiences were part of life: going to work, filing her taxes, drinking kale and spinach smoothies to make sure she’s getting enough vitamin K. It was boring, and vaguely uncomfortable, but no more so than anything else; all she had to do was lie there for the fifteen minutes it took for Max to finish, roll off her, and go to sleep. There were worse things. The idea of doing it (Rachel’s words again) _on purpose_ , because she _wants_ it, is something she can’t wrap her head around.

“What about you?” she says. She puts her hand over top of Rachel’s. “Did you have – have you dated?”

“Mmm, _dating_ is probably overstating it.” Rachel flushes lightly. “There were a few girls in college. It wasn’t – it didn’t have to mean anything, if you didn’t want it to. And I didn’t.” She chuckles suddenly. “After the first time, I grabbed my clothes and ran as soon as we were done. Didn’t even wait for the next morning to do the walk of shame.”

Emily tries to picture it: Rachel in a college dorm, limbs tangled with another girl’s on a single bed, probably underneath a Pulp Fiction poster. A sock on the door to ward off interruptions. The kinds of things normal people did. “And you liked it?”

“I didn’t _not_ like it.” Rachel bumps her nose against Emily’s shoulder. “And there’s been a few since then. Just hookups. I wasn’t kidding about Tinder.” She pulls a face. “I had to be careful about it. My agent wouldn’t have been happy if I got outed because I was fucking around on a hookup app. But yeah, I’ve had decent sex before.” Her fingers skate across Emily’s skin. “Did you ever try touching yourself?”

Emily feels herself turn bright red. “No.” Honestly, the idea hadn’t even occurred to her: if sex with another person was a chore, why would she expect to enjoy sex with herself? Her body was just something she carried around, not an interactive experience.

“You could try.” Rachel kisses her shoulder. “I could watch.”

Emily freezes. She thinks of herself, stripped and vulnerable under Rachel’s gaze, fumbling around trying to figure out what she’s doing. Failing over and over. “No. I can’t – “

“Shh. It’s okay.” Rachel props herself up on her elbows, looking down at Emily. Her hair is falling in her eyes, and Emily reaches out to brush it aside. “How about the other way around, then? You could watch me. I don’t mind.”

Emily stares at her. “You want to do that?”

“Why not?” Rachel stretches out, curling her toes. “It feels good. You get to enjoy yourself without doing anything you don’t like. And I get to get off.” She flashes a grin. “I might not be a sex expert, but I definitely have a degree in finger painting, if you catch my drift.”

“You’re disgusting,” Emily says reflexively. She sits up. “Okay.”

From the look on Rachel’s face, you’d think Emily had just given her a birthday present instead of agreeing to watch her touch herself because she was too neurotic to get fucked. She wriggles downward until she’s flat on her back, one leg bent at the knee, a hand resting on her inner thigh. She pauses. “Can you talk while I do this?”

“Talk?” Emily blinks. “About what?”

“God, anything,” Rachel’s sliding her hand up and down her thigh. “Talk to me about health food. I don’t care. I just want to hear you. Or – “ Her eyes light up in a way that (going by Emily’s memories) usually presage an idea that Emily’s going to hate. “You must have some fantasies, right? Talk about that.”

“I really don’t.” The movement of Rachel’s hand is mesmerizing, and she hasn’t even done anything yet. “I never have.”

“Never _ever_?” Rachel jogs Emily’s elbow with her free hand. “Even when we were teenagers? Come on, there has to be something.”

Emily starts to shake her head. “No, I – “

Another memory resurfaces. This one is foggier, probably because it only ever took place in her imagination, but it’s definitely there. “Oh, no.”

“Oh _yes_.” Rachel looks delighted. “Come on, I told you my hookup horror stories. Spill.”

“You’ll make fun of me!”

“I won’t!” Rachel sounds – in what Emily considers an act of shocking audacity – actually offended at the suggestion. “This bed is a no-joke zone. Promise.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Emily takes a deep breath. The memory is coalescing, along with the circumstances in which she built it – in bed for the night, huddled under the covers, telling herself stories to lull herself to sleep. Dreaming of what she couldn’t have, what she couldn’t even admit to herself that she wanted. “It’s - it was Seven Minutes in Heaven, all right? I wanted to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with you.” Her skin is burning once again, but this time she knows it’s from embarrassment.

Rachel makes a little _ahhhh_ noise. Her hand climbs higher. “How did you want to play it? When you thought about it.”

“At a sleepover,” Emily says. “With all of us.” She’d never pictured it happening at her own house, of course – her mother never let her host sleepovers. It was usually at Rachel’s, sometimes at Bill’s or Stan’s. “We’d start with Spin the Bottle, and you’d spin it, and it would land on me. And then we would go to the hall closet. It – probably wasn’t as big as I imagined it.” In fact, she _knows_ it wasn’t that big, because she stowed her coat in there often enough. But in her mind, it had been big enough to move around in.

“That thing was always full of junk,” Rachel says. Her voice has gone slightly breathy. “Then what?”

“Then you’d kiss me,” Emily says. “As soon as the door was closed. I’d be standing with my back to the wall, and you’d sort of – push me. Not hard. But so that I was against the wall, and you were in front of me. You’d have an arm up on either side, so I couldn’t slide away.” She hadn’t wanted to slide away, even in the fantasy, but it had helped to imagine that she couldn’t. That she was only there because of the game, and the responsibility for stopping it was out of her hands entirely. “You’d kiss me with tongue right away. I was surprised, but it felt good. And then you – “ She’s starting to feel warm again, throbbing between her legs. “You’d push my skirt up.”

“Yeah?” Rachel turns her head to look at Emily. Her pupils are gigantic and glassy. “You wanted that?”

“Yeah.” It’s hard to concentrate on what she’s saying and watch Rachel at the same time. The muscles in her thighs are tensing as her hand moves. Emily wonders how long it’ll last, what’s going to eventually tip her over the edge. “Sometimes I imagined it differently. Sometimes I put my legs around your waist, and you hoisted me up. I liked that. But other times I imagined you pushed my skirt up and you put your hand on me – over my underwear, but I could feel it, it felt so good – “

Rachel moans. Emily’s tempted to echo her. “Jesus Christ, Emily,” she says. “Then what? Did I finger you?”

“No,” Emily says. “No, I wasn’t that brave.”

“I think you were pretty fucking – _ahh_ – brave.” Rachel’s squirming on the sheets, hips canting up against her own fingers. “You’re one of the bravest people I know, Ems. You know I didn’t even let myself think about this shit for years, and you were – _ohhhhhh_ fuck – fantasizing about this – “

“Rachel,” Emily blurts out. “Rachel, can I touch you?” Rachel is practically writhing now, and it’s too much. It’s too tempting. Emily’s hands are itching, she wants to touch Rachel so badly. She feels the way she felt when she was fourteen and didn’t know how to describe it, only now she _can_ describe it and Rachel’s right there for her to touch.

“God, yes,” Rachel gasps. Emily leans over her, closes a hand over one of her breasts, and cups the other hand over Rachel’s where it’s moving against her. “Yeah,” Rachel says, “yeah, like that – Emily, fuck, that’s so fucking good, don’t stop, _don’t_ – “

Emily kisses her. It stops Rachel babbling; now she’s just moaning, rocking hard against their combined hands. Emily squeezes her breast, pushes the heel of her palm against Rachel’s nipple. Rachel practically screams into her mouth and comes; Emily can feel it when Rachel’s thighs close around her hand and her whole body shakes with the intensity of her orgasm. There’s so much of her, hot, damp flesh everywhere, and Emily can’t handle it. She feels like she’s going fucking insane.

Emily rests her head in the crook of Rachel’s shoulder for the comedown, waiting until her breathing evens out. “I never imagined it stopping,” she says into Rachel’s neck. “I never went that far. I just wanted it to last forever.”

“Yeah, well.” Rachel kisses the top of her head. “The feeling was mutual. Is.”

Emily lifts her head and shifts backwards, giving Rachel some space. Rachel looks at her. Her mouth is red and swollen, her cheeks flushed to match. “Listen,” she says. “You don’t have to – honestly, tell me if you don’t want it, and I’ll never mention it again – but I would _really_ like to eat you out.”

Emily instinctively clenches her legs together as her whole body vibrates. “Jesus Christ, Rachel.”

“I mean it,” Rachel says. “We can do whatever you want. Just - “

“Yes,” Emily says, before she loses her nerve. Maybe she’ll lose it anyway halfway through, but that’s okay; Rachel will stop if Emily says to. And she feels so good, finally remembers how to feel good – what it felt like when she let herself go. She can do it again.

She leans back against the pillows as Rachel scrambles down the bed. She kneels in between Emily’s legs, then pauses as she looks up at her. “You’re _sure_ – “

“ _Please_ ,” Emily says, and Rachel ducks down and licks her.

Emily nearly slams her thighs together, only thinking better of it at the last second; she doesn’t want to crush Rachel’s head. She’s already soaking wet just from watching Rachel, and Rachel’s tongue has her even wetter, so much so that her thighs are slick with arousal, sliding against Rachel’s face as she moves. Rachel isn’t going straight for her clit; instead she’s teasing her outer lips with the tip of her tongue, drawing little patterns and only occasionally flicking her tongue at Emily’s core. Emily can barely stand it. She reaches down and grabs a handful of Rachel’s hair, and Rachel gasps against her. “Oh, _fuck_ yes.”

“Wait,” Emily says, “you want – “

Rachel jerks her head, basically pulling her hair for her. Emily gets the message. She wraps Rachel’s hair around her hand, digging into her scalp while Rachel teases her with her tongue. She tries to drag Rachel in closer, but Rachel only closes her mouth. Her eyes, when they dart up to meet Emily’s, are mischievous. “Someone’s impatient.”

“I am going to _kill_ you,” Emily says, yanking harder on Rachel’s hair. “Literally kill you. They will never find your body.”

Rachel laughs against her. The vibrations make Emily want to scream. “Who’s going to get you off then?”

“Nobody’s getting me off _now_ – “ Rachel chooses that moment to lick across her clit, and the rest of Emily’s sentence dissolves in a yell. “Fuck! _Fuck_ , Rachel!”

Now that Rachel’s licking her where she needs it, she can barely string a coherent word together. She just thrashes against Rachel’s mouth, still pulling on her hair. Her body is vibrating like a plucked string, every motion reverberating in her core. She thinks she might be crying; her eyes are definitely watering, at least. She grabs one of her breasts, half for the pleasure of rubbing her nipple, half just to have something to hold. Her thighs really are squeezing around Rachel’s head now, but Rachel doesn’t seem to mind.

Rachel bites one of her thighs, and Emily kicks out, foot hitting the bedpost. “Ow! Fuck!”

“Aww, did you hurt yourself?” Emily can feel Rachel laughing, but she’s too turned on to care. Then Rachel sinks a finger inside her, and the world whites out. Rachel’s back to licking her clit, and there’s a finger – no, there’s _two_ fingers inside her, stretching her out. Rachel crooks her fingers up just as she scrapes her teeth across Emily’s clit, and Emily’s whole body seizes up. Her stomach, her thighs, her shoulders – everything is coiled with tension for a few breathless seconds, and then it _snaps_. She’s beyond any attempt at keeping quiet; she can barely hear herself over the roaring in her ears, but she’s pretty sure she’s screaming.

When she comes back to herself, Rachel’s pulled her fingers out, kissing the inside of her thigh where she bit Emily before. Emily tugs on her hair, not hard enough to hurt. “Come here?”

Rachel crawls back up the bed and settles in the crook of Emily’s arm. She grins at her, obviously self-satisfied. For once in her life, Emily can’t blame her. “Was it good for you?”

Emily bursts out laughing, swatting at her. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Rachel curls up against Emily, still grinning. “You want to get dressed and go downstairs, or stay here?”

“Mmm. Stay here for a bit.” Her heart rate and breathing are slowly returning to normal, the euphoria of seconds before replaced with sleepy contentment. Rachel is warm in her arms, and Emily wants to keep here there for as long as she can.

The air conditioner kicks on. Emily squirms until she manages to get a hold of the duvet, pulling it up over both of them. Rachel just grunts into her neck, but it sounds like a grateful kind of grunt, so Emily lets it go.

After they’ve laid there for a good five minutes, Rachel says, “So. What next?”

Emily blinks down at her. “Could you be a bit more specific?”

“I mean, what’s next for you?” Rachel props herself up on her elbows. “You’re getting divorced, so I’m guessing you’re not going to go home. Are you getting a hotel? Job hunting? What?”

“God.” Emily rubs her face. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about any of that stuff.” She still needs to find a lawyer, she thinks; someone who won’t ask for money upfront. Do lawyers usually ask for payment upfront? She’s never hired one before, so she’s not really sure. “I will need a job, I guess. But I can’t really get a reference from my old one, so I’m not sure how. Besides – “ She sighs. “I don’t think I want to be a receptionist again.”

“You could be my agent,” Rachel says. Her glasses have slipped down her nose; Emily pushes them back into place. “I could fire my old one. He kind of sucks anyway.”

Emily laughs. “I don’t know shit about being an agent.”

“Neither does my current one!” Rachel grins. “You’d be in good company.”

“Yeah, no.” Emily stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t want to be an agent, either. Maybe I’ll go back to school for something.” She thinks of the previous night’s conversation with Bill. “Paralegal training, maybe.”

“Your courtroom opponents would tremble before you,” Rachel says seriously. Emily smacks her shoulder. “Paralegals don’t work in the courtroom, dumbass.”

Rachel just starts humming the _Law &Order_ theme song. Emily rolls her eyes. “I have to find a place to live before I do anything else anyway. My budget’s kind of tight.” She doesn’t really want to discuss how tight. Rachel will undoubtedly know eventually, but that is a conversation for the future.

Rachel looks up at her. Her hair is a mess, and her glasses are still slightly fogged up. “Come stay with me, then?”

“What?” Emily laughs uneasily. “Rachel, I can’t just – “

“Why not?” She sits up. “You don’t have anywhere else you need to be right now. I have a big place in L.A. with more than enough room for two. If we’re doing this – “ She makes a vague gesture that Emily interprets as encompassing their current lack of clothes, as well as the general state of the bed. “We might as well stick together. I think we’re usually better off when we stick together.”

Emily thinks about that. She thinks about what’s waiting for her if she goes back to New York – a prolonged fight with Max, conducted in person rather than through professional intermediaries. No job. No house. A closet full of clothes she hates. The handful of belongings she actually has to her name aren’t really things she wants to hang on to. She has nothing whatsoever to her name in L.A, but at least she’ll have a fresh start.

And Rachel. She’ll have Rachel.

“Okay,” she says. Rachel’s eyebrows shoot up. “I’ll go with you. And we can just – take it from there.”

It’s going to take a lot, she thinks. She’s been married for over a decade, but she still doesn’t really know what it means to share her life with someone; to actually mingle their separate spheres, argue with them over whether to cook dinner or get takeout, share a bed in any meaningful sense, compromise on life choices instead of just going along to get along. To have a partner instead of a caretaker. All of that is still a learning curve for her. And Rachel, who has – by her own admission – barely dated will be adjusting to having someone living with her. It could be a disaster.

But she’s spent twenty-five years living just to avert disaster. What might happen if she jumps in headfirst instead?

Rachel kisses her. “Here’s to the first day of the rest of your life, I guess.”

“Ugh.” Emily tries to scowl at her, but it comes out as a smile. “Don’t quote mugs at me.”

“Emily,” Rachel says seriously, “you haven’t even seen my mug collection yet. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

“Oh, yeah? How many of them have coffee rings on the bottom?”

“That’s part of their charm!”

“Right,” Emily says. “As soon as we get to L.A, I am throwing out all your disgusting biohazard mugs. I can’t believe you haven’t gotten botulism poisoning yet.”

Rachel starts to laugh. “Everyone in L.A. already has botulism poisoning. It’s called Botox.”

Against her will, Emily starts to laugh too. Rachel is curled up on her chest, chuckles vibrating through both their bodies. Emily thinks: _I get to have this. I didn’t have anything for years, and now I get to have this_. It may be a risk, but on balance, it’s one she’s willing to take.

**Author's Note:**

> My eternal thanks to the people (nonnies) who cheered me on while I was writing this and helped me crack my writer's block more than once. Also to Kat Devlin and the White Whale for writing "[Dear Emmi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZccuAb5B5lo)," which I listened to more or less constantly while I was writing this. 
> 
> This series is functionally done, but I reserve the right to come back and write absolutely shameless curtainfic about these characters later. It's what they deserve.
> 
> Also, this story has [an illustration](https://twitter.com/EyeofAster/status/1270213250374864896) now!


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